Blue Monday
by attica
Summary: "I can't stand you, Granger.  Every second I'm with you is like pure, agonizing torture.  But I have to save you.  Do you understand?"  Draco/Hermione.
1. The Train to Hogwarts

Blue Monday

(Chapter one)

Taking the train to Hogwarts alone allowed for too much thinking. It was exactly what she had been afraid of – sitting alone, staring out of the window, thinking about how much things had changed. She had only realized how inconsequential such thinking was the last few months. Thinking about change, mulling it over, picking it apart like a questionable meatloaf at a questionable party – how much energy she'd wasted, how much sleep she'd lost, how much she worried over something that she could never, ever change.

She had itched to write to Harry, and she had, eventually. She'd started out with niceties like, _Hello Harry, how are you? And Ron? Are you keeping up with your studies? Things are fine at home. Well, not fine, but okay. I've been watching over my dad –_

And then she'd scratched it out, crumpled the parchment up in her two hands, and tossed it. She'd written drafts upon drafts of letters to both Harry and Ron, filling them up with lighthearted lies to balance out the few heavy truths she allowed herself to write down on paper. Things like, '_I've been watching this entertaining program on the telly about a group of teenagers getting themselves involved in all sorts of catastrophes'_ and '_I tried cooking dinner tonight for my dad and I almost succeeded in burning our kitchen down.'_ But she knew they'd see right through her.

She'd sent one letter in the two months she'd been at home:

_Hello Harry and Ron,_

_How are you two? Everything is well at home, considering the circumstance. See you soon._

_All my love,_

_Hermione._

All the while, the pair of them had sent more than enough letters in return. Ron had filled her in about all of the Quidditch matches and pranks at school in his clumsy, agitated writing, while Harry's had been more thought-out, careful, and subtle. Which was only reasonable, seeing as how he'd had more than enough experience in coping with the people he loved dying.

_We miss you_, Hermione, he'd written to her. _I genuinely hope you are doing fine_.

Thinking about going back gave her mixed feelings. At home, she'd been dying to come back. The emptiness of their house, packing away all of her mother's things, the emptiness in her father's eyes, the mirrored hollowness that she'd felt in her own, and the almost desperate alienation she found herself surrounded with. . . she wanted nothing more than to run back to Hogwarts and bury herself in schoolwork. She'd finished the work her professors had given her to keep up with the class in two weeks, and had even gone ahead, but somehow she could never escape the gaping hole her mother's death had left behind. Not only that, but she always felt foolish for trying.

Hermione was rereading one of the chapters in her Dark Arts textbook when she heard the door to her train compartment clumsily slide open, loudly banging against the side panel and surprising her.

Blinking, she found herself looking up at none other than Draco Malfoy.

He gave a look of disgust but said nothing to her, slamming the door shut and occupying the seat across from her.

She stared at him for a good minute before she spoke up, irritated. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Let's pretend for a second, Granger, that whatever I happen to do with my life is any of your business," he said, narrowing his eyes. "Oh look, second's up."

She rolled her eyes and strategically propped her book up so that she wouldn't have to look at her newest and only train companion. Hogwarts students were only allowed to go home in the middle of the term for special circumstances, and it just so turned out that it had to be her and Draco Malfoy. She would have grabbed her luggage and left, but the Hogwarts Express designated its train compartments when it wasn't being specifically used for the school. Mid-term, the Hogwarts Express had several other destinations and transported other civilians.

And so she glued her eyes to the pages of her book, and distracted herself from the presence of the single most repugnant boy sitting across from her.

ooo

"How did she die?"

One hundred and forty pages later, he had finally decided to treat her like a human being, and she didn't know whether she liked it or not. She wasn't born yesterday. Any interaction with Malfoy was bound to be an unpleasant one. Especially if his chosen topic was her recently deceased mother.

She hesitated at first, staring hard at the word she had paused at when he'd spoken up. In her mind she weighed the possible consequences of honesty, but she also knew that she had to talk about it sometime. She had to get used to it. She needed the practice.

"Cancer," she finally responded. She didn't put down her book. "Then a brain aneurysm."

Life was just painfully ironic that way. When it was clear the cancer was not going to kill her, the brain aneurysm did.

She expected to hear a snide remark about Muggle medicine and how primitive it was, but it never came. Instead all she heard was this: "Heavy." Nothing else, just "Heavy."

She was shocked, but it wasn't shock that sourly bubbled up her throat. Suddenly, yet again, she had to face her memories, and her regret. There was always a certain amount of blame that came with the death of somebody you loved: the conviction that you should have spent more time with them, that you should have gone home the first time they asked you to, that you shouldn't have been so selfish, or naïve in thinking that they would get better and everything would be okay. Because her mother had begun to get better, and things had been fine, until suddenly – they weren't. One day, she was there, and she was better, and the next she was dead.

And suddenly, she found herself to confessing the question that had kept her bitter, and angry: "What good is magic if you can't save the people you love from dying?"

She hadn't heard herself say it, but she did hear the silence after it. It was deafening and thick and suffocating. She was too afraid and humiliated to put down her book and look at him, but she knew, even through her three hundred page tome, she knew that he was looking. She just knew.

ooo

They walked along silently to Hogwarts with their trunks. It was spring now and the lawns were green and lush. For a moment, it made her forget and smile. And then she glanced his way, and they met eyes, and reality settled in on her and made her stumble in her step. When he finally quickened his pace and walked ahead, she was grateful.

She unpacked her belongings in her room, before brushing her hair and heading down to the great hall, where she knew everybody would be eating lunch. The paintings greeted her, the stairs creaked and groaned, the marble tiles squeaked under her feet, and she relished all of it. After her awkward train ride with Malfoy, she was glad if she never met silence again.

As she neared the great hall's doors, she caught Malfoy about to head in. He gave one glance at her, perfectly stoic, before walking in. She stood there a second, blinking, before she took a deep breath and followed.

As she walked in, she tried not to pay too much attention to the dozens of pairs of eyes that suddenly fixated on her, and the way their voices lowered down to unnerving, hushed tones. She found Harry, who then tapped Ron on the shoulder, who looked up to see her – relieved, and grateful, yet nervous and suddenly unsure. He gave Harry a look of uncertainty, which he ignored in favor of greeting her with a hug. The way he hugged her was cathartic: immediate, and strong, and firm. She even allowed herself to close her eyes for a brief second, and she imagined unraveling and telling him that she felt like a wreck. But she didn't have to, because she knew that he already knew.

Ron was next. His was clumsy but close and just as firm as Harry's. Ginny was next, and then they all sat down, trying to join in to other conversations, and found herself trying to renegotiate normalcy. She assured herself it would be easy, because it was all around her. All she had to do, like the last remaining puzzle piece, was just fit.

ooo

It was a few days later that Harry had finally gotten her alone. Ron loved her, but being Ron, he was ill-equipped to deal with personal issues and women, especially both at the same time. He certainly tried, but he always ended up saying the wrong things, which eventually convinced him to stop trying altogether. Hermione found that she wasn't too upset about that.

They were in the library, doing research for an essay for one of their classes. She was in the aisles, skimming her eyes through the worn spines, her fingers following fast behind, searching for a book. Harry stood next to her.

"Listen, Hermione," he said, quietly and seriously. "Are you. . . I mean, are you okay? Really okay, I mean?"

She didn't look at him. She subconsciously wondered whether "okay" meant "barely hanging on by a thread." "I'm fine, Harry."

He wasn't convinced. "Are you sure? Because we wrote to you and you never once responded, and. . . you could talk to me, you know."

She froze, and she looked at him. Here he was, telling her that he would be the shoulder to cry on, her sole confidant about the way her life had turned upside down – everything that she had ever wanted to hear, and everything she had thought she would jump at to accept. . . but could she? They had been there, at the funeral, right beside her. That day she had felt closer to them than she had ever felt before, but now she felt as if she had been left stranded on an island, watching them as they sailed away.

Where could she begin, anyway? And how could she ever talk to him – honestly and genuinely talk to him – without guarding herself, knowing his own tragic past with his parents? Because it was different, losing your parents when you barely knew them. But loss was loss, right?

"I know, Harry," she said to him. "Thanks."

He just nodded at her. She found her book, slid it out, and they walked back to their desk. There they eased back into normal topics of conversation – comfortable ones, nowhere close to death. Like quidditch, and professors, and coursework – things that were always familiar and never changed.

ooo

She kept expecting to find a letter from her father waiting for her on her bed, asking her how she was, and if she was all caught up with school. When her mother died, she had painted this picture in her head that she and her dad would stick closer than ever, because the only remaining piece of her that they had now was each other. She knew better now, although she tried not to, because she refused to believe that she had lost her father, too. As far as she knew, they had only buried one of her parents. She was still supposed to have a father, no matter how distant and depressed he had become.

After two weeks, she wrote to him. She asked him how he was doing and filled up her letter with empty descriptions of school. What she was really doing was fishing for a reaction, even so much as a: _Hello darling, everything's shit, but I love you and I hope to see you soon. Hang in there_. _Love, Dad. _

She told him she loved him and that everything was going to be okay. She knew that it wasn't her job – it was the parent's job – but if he wasn't going to do it, somebody had to.

She was worried about him. After the funeral, he had gone to work like nothing had happened, refusing the grievance vacation they offered him. He disappeared and said next to nothing to her, as if that day they'd laid her down in that coffin, he had jumped in there with her, and what she had now was an empty shell of the man she used to call her father. She liked to think that maybe he just needed some time. Like her, he just needed to renegotiate his place in reality.

"If you're thinking of jumping, there are protective charms around the tower. You'll end up floating in the air until a couple comes up here to shag and finds you."

She looked to her right and saw Malfoy, his Head Boy badge confidently gleaming in the moonlight, as if winking at her. She had paused her patrol at the Astronomy Tower to do a little bit of thinking, and now he had caught her slacking off on the job.

She rolled her eyes. "As if I couldn't come up with something more creative than jumping off the Astronomy Tower." She began to walk away, not so eager on ending her night with an encounter with Malfoy – except she suddenly turned around again. "Why were you on the train?"

She rationalized that he owed her this answer. She had answered his question on the train, and now it was his turn. After all, everybody knew why she had left, but nobody seemed to know why he had. And Hermione was not Hermione if she wasn't always interested in knowing things other people didn't.

He just looked at her. "My mother's ill," he said, his voice entirely even.

Despite herself, she asked another question. "Is it serious?"

"It could be." Then he paused. "You're right," he said. "Magic doesn't save people from dying at all. Fat lot it's good for, in reality."

She couldn't help but stare. It was a tense yet awkward moment because she knew that she was suddenly privy to information that possibly not very many people knew about Malfoy. She wondered if he had told her because he sympathized with her – because he could see himself in her position if things really did go awry – or because he pitied her. Either way, they were both coming to terms with the limitations of magic – something they had both worshiped and so eagerly put on a pedestal just when they had been so young.

She told herself to quit this strange conversation and walk away, but she felt a kind of budding connection that kept her feet planted where she was. When he came closer to her, she felt the reflex to turn and walk away, but it was dulled by her piqued intrigue and curiosity. It was weird what the recognition of a not-so-common bond did to two people. Maybe even magical.

"School suddenly seems so trivial," he said to her, like they were friends. Of course, his tone wasn't exactly friendly, but his statements were nowhere near derisive or poisonous.

"But it keeps your mind busy," she said. "It needs it. Your brain needs to know that there are other things happening, too, and that the world hasn't stopped." She didn't tell him that for her, it became a lifeboat: something to hold onto to keep from drowning. She had a feeling she didn't have to. When death was coming, there were places your mind escaped to, and you explored all of the possibilities of distance and not feeling.

"Maybe," he says, glancing at her. "But it feels like I'm just waiting. Uselessly, here, reading irrelevant ancient tomes, herding buffoons in uniforms, waiting for her to die at home."

"I'm sure your mother doesn't see it that way."

"No," he scoffed quietly. "Of course she doesn't."

She didn't know what to make of this new Draco Malfoy. Was he aware he was somewhat confiding in her? She was sure he did, but maybe it didn't matter. He knew she wouldn't tell. That day on the train, he knew that he had chosen the perfect confidant: the post-mortem version of someone who had been, in concept, in the same boat.

Then, suddenly, he turned and began to leave. The conversation was over, and she found herself silently exhaling. She suddenly felt very odd, watching the back of his blond head as he walked away.

"Oh, and by the way," he said, glancing back at her. "Five points from Gryffindor for slacking off on the job."

And then there it was, as unexpected as an anvil falling from the sky: normalcy.

ooo

"Isn't it a shame," mused Parvati, inspecting a pink beaded dress, "that there aren't snogging tutors?"

Hermione looked up for a brief second, catching Ginny and Lavender's reaction, before going back to distractedly looking through the jewelry. Going dress shopping wasn't her idea of a blast, but Ginny had been persistent about bringing her along, presumably to get her out of her funk. Ginny, bless her soul, was trying her best to pep things up for her, and Hermione, unable to say no, let her. First by letting her trim off two inches of her hair, and now by dress shopping.

"At first it sounded a bit mad," Ginny said, "but it's actually sort of brilliant."

"Think about it," said Parvati. "How many boys have we had slobber all over us in the name of teenage romance? It really is such an unnecessary and disgusting rite of passage." She made a face, sliding a dress back into the rack.

"Some people are just born great kissers," Lavender stated. "Others just have to practice."

"But you can't win, either way," said Ginny, trying on a necklace of blue pearls. "The blokes who are great snoggers always know it, and as a result, are the biggest pricks on the planet. It's the inexperienced and slobbery snoggers that are the nice ones."

Parvati and Lavender nodded in agreement, before giggling and starting a conversation on who they had snogged and how they fared on the Snog-O-Meter.

"Dean is an eight," Ginny said proudly. "But when we first met, he was a five, with a slob level of six." Then she turned to her. "What about you, Hermione? Who have you snogged?"

She felt all three pairs of eyes boring holes into her with anticipation. It was a great topic to get her mind off of her mother's death, for sure – but did it have to be humiliating, too?

"Let's just say I'm nobody to judge on kissing skills," she said cryptically, and Ginny rolled her eyes.

"Come on, I know you kissed Viktor Krum, at least!"

Hermione relented. "He was okay. Not too slobbery, but he was enthusiastic."

Parvati and Lavender squealed loudly, making the shopkeeper look over.

"You know who I wonder is a good kisser?" said Lavender. "Malfoy. I mean, he's got to be, right? Those lips?"

"I can't tell, he's either scowling or smirking all the time," Ginny scoffed.

"I agree with Lav," Parvati said, vigorously nodding. "I am dying to know. But I'd bet all my Galleons that he's an ace kisser. He sure doesn't look like a boy that would slobber." Her eyes glazed over and Hermione couldn't help but laugh.

"Malfoy's a reptile," Hermione remarked, shaking her head to herself, even though she had a niggling feeling that there might be a little bit more to him than the vile Malfoy they all knew and despised – at least when it came to his mother.

Lavender winked at her. "There are some of us who wouldn't mind kissing a few frogs if they sent a pair of diamond earrings our way every now and then," she said, modeling a pair of large sparkling earrings.

"Speaking of Malfoy," Ginny said, "he isn't up to his usual viciousness lately. Has anybody else noticed?"

"Ever since he went on that mysterious trip," agreed Parvati. "Maybe he found God," she giggled.

"I feel sorry for God," muttered Hermione, and the girls blew up in a fit of laughter. As she watched them, she knew that she was years from telling them anything about what she knew about Malfoy – years from telling anyone, as a matter of fact. It had become this strangely personal experience, one that she found herself replaying sometimes before bed. Had it happened? If it had, there was no proof of it anywhere. Yes, he no longer went out of his way to gouge her with his usual Mudblood remarks, but nothing had seemed to change.

At that, she found herself shaking her head. No, that was a lie. Everything had changed. She knew because she was still having a hard time catching up.

An hour later, she was out of the dress shop, waving goodbye to the laughing girls as she went on to meet Harry and Ron at the Three Broomsticks. The sky was an ominous and murky gray, and soon, she felt the rain pelting her. She cast a shielding charm and took a short cut to the Three Broomsticks in an effort to get there before dark.

The Three Broomsticks was always teeming with people. The minute she'd passed the shrunken heads at the door and walked in, she found herself removing her scarf, nearly feverish from all of the body heat contained in the room. It was loud, as always, and the place was sticky and sweet from butterbeer. She squeezed through people, looking for Harry and Ron, but after the third time of carefully scanning the room, she was positive they had forgotten. Sighing, she sat herself down and ordered a drink.

Three and a half firewhiskeys later, Hermione found herself stumbling out of the Three Broomsticks. She hadn't had much experience with alcohol, but she told herself she was doing better than expected. Maybe she'd inherited this from her mum. She knew, from stories and a few of her old university pictures, that her mum had been famous for pounding them back and not looking fazed at all. Nevertheless, she did feel very warm – comfortably warm, considering she had forgotten to re-cast her shielding charm when she'd walked out.

The old Hermione would have been incensed that Harry and Ron had forgotten, but this Hermione, the Hermione walking along in the dark, soaked from the rain, didn't seem to care. She imagined them having a good time somewhere, probably with Seamus and Dean and Neville, and she felt happy for them – to be so unworried and carefree and happy to be alive.

She was going through the shortcut alley, absentmindedly clutching her wand while walking in a vague haze, when her right foot slipped on a wet stone, and with the blistering sound of her skull hitting the hard ground, she was out.


	2. Fighting Words

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* * *

(Chapter Two)

She was freezing. It was what woke her up – that, and the pounding migraine she felt pulsating all over her skull. It took her some time to get used to the weight of her head – God, it felt like a million pounds – sitting on what felt like a jelly pipe and was really, by definition, her neck. Her first observation was that somebody – somebody strong and wearing a black coat – was carrying her, and her second observation was that it was still raining, but none of it was hitting her.

"What the fuck?" she heard herself say. She sounded like she was a million miles away.

The stranger glanced down at her through his nose. She recognized that nose.

"Oh, look. You're alive," he said monotonously.

"Malfoy?" she said, squinting at him. And then she paused to think, calculating the chances that Malfoy would be carrying her through the rain in real life. "Oh, shit. I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Unfortunately, no," he answered. "But you might be concussed, so stay awake, Granger."

That seemed like a very good idea, but a feeling of warmth passed through her body and she felt her head give way again. When he noticed, he immediately shook her awake again.

"Jesus Christ," she distantly heard him mutter. "I said _stay awake_, Granger. I thought you lived to follow instructions. Why don't you blather on about something?"

She followed his orders. "My friends think you'd be a good kisser," she blabbed. "They don't think you'd slobber all over them like other boys do. Nice boys, I mean. Nice boys always slobber."

He looked at her with his lips tightly pressed together. She couldn't figure out if he was trying to hold back a laugh. Dreamily she wondered how that would sound, Draco Malfoy laughing at a joke that wasn't purely intended to hurt somebody's feelings. Did it sound any better?

"They're right," he told her. "I don't."

"But I bet you did, once upon a time," Hermione scoffed, her eyelids drooping. "Nobody's born a great snogger."

"Well," he said gruffly, shifting her a little in his arms, "I'm not just nobody, am I?"

He shook her awake again, and she opened her eyes to see that they were nearing Hogwarts.

"I'm taking you to the hospital wing," he told her.

"No, don't," she insisted. "I feel fine. Honest."

"Fine? You've got a head wound that's bleeding all over my favorite coat," he snarled at her.

She raised her hand to touch the throbbing part of her head, and then looked at the blood coating her fingers. She willed herself not to pass out. "It's just a scratch."

But Malfoy being Malfoy, he swore at her while he carried her through the doors of the hospital wing, where Madam Pomfrey came rushing to her aid. He set her down on the hospital bed and she hazily whispered to him, already half unconscious, "You could have left me there, it would have been fine," to which he said nothing. She watched him at the foot of her bed, her blood barely distinguishable against his black coat but had stained his white shirt and hands.

"Stay awake, Granger," he firmly ordered.

Two seconds later, everything went black.

ooo

"Do you think she tried to kill herself?"

"Madam Pomfrey said she slipped in Hogsmeade and hit her head."

"Did you hear who found her? Malfoy, out of all people!"

"Honestly, Ron and Harry! How could you forget you were supposed to meet her at the Three Broomsticks? You two are impossible!"

She spent a good three and a half minutes listening to her friends argue about her state and circumstance before she finally decided to let them know she was awake. She opened her eyes and she was greeted with jolly – yet concerned – salutations and awkward – yet well-meaning – hugs. She looked at Ron and Harry at either side of her bed and she could tell that the both of them were particularly eaten up with guilt.

"Merlin, I'm so sorry, Hermione – we are such idiots, we didn't—" Harry was saying, while Ron was also blathering on: "Neville had challenged me who could win wizard's chess sloshed, and you know me and challenges—"

"It's okay," she said to both of them. Her head still ached and she couldn't take both of them talking at once. "It's not your fault, really. I'm not angry."

Ron perked up at this, but Harry didn't seem to buy it.

"How are you feeling, Hermione?" Ginny asked.

"My head still hurts," she said, wincing as she found the tender spot all bandaged up. "But other than that, I think I'll live."

"What happened?" asked Harry.

"I was walking back from the Three Broomsticks," she explained, leaving out the part where she was a little sloshed, "and I slipped and fell and hit my head. That's all I remember."

"Oh? You don't remember who rescued you from dying all alone in the alley?" Ginny insinuatingly asked.

"Not at all," she lied. She remembered, all right – more than enough to feel stupid about, at least – and she didn't feel like sharing any of that just yet. Or ever.

"Oh," Ginny said, disappointed. "Well, word in the halls is that it was Malfoy."

"Which I don't believe," Ron said, adamantly. "He would sooner chew off his own hand than touch Hermione. Git." Then he looked at her. "No offense, Hermione."

"Well, somebody saved her last night, and we should be grateful, whoever it might be," Harry sighed. "Madam Pomfrey said she'll keep you until tomorrow morning for observation, but we'll be back after classes."

And with that, her friends left the hospital wing and she stared up at the ceiling, sighing. She remembered Malfoy and bleeding all over his coat, stumbling out of the Three Broomsticks warm from the firewhiskeys, and most of all: the confession she had whispered to him before she had passed out for the night. Everything about that night seemed so unlike her that she felt as if she had been watching another person that looked remarkably like her through a foggy window. And why had it been Malfoy, out of all people, to find her unconscious and bleeding away in the alley? It almost seemed too bizarre to be an accident.

She looked at the hospital doors and she realized she was suddenly petrified. What if he came to visit? Should she pretend she didn't remember anything at all? What would she say? What would _he_ say?

But she had no reason to worry about that. Because for the rest of the day, she watched her housemates walk in and out of those doors, with not a single Slytherin Head Boy in sight.

That night, as she began to drift off to sleep, she reached behind her head to try to fluff up her pillow. As she slid her hand through beneath, she found a folded up note tucked inside. And all it said was:

_You owe me a new coat._

ooo

She kept the note in the pocket of her robes. Sometimes she snuck her hand inside just to feel the crisp paper against her fingertips. She didn't know why she did this – especially since the note was evidence of a bad night. But it was also evidence of something else. What that "something else" was, she wasn't sure yet, but it definitely was _something else_. Something else so far from normalcy that it flustered her to think about it, but also comforted her, because for the first time since she'd heard her mother was dead, she knew that she wasn't alone.

"You're not brain-damaged, are you?" Ron said to her, chewing through a tough leg of ham. "Because you've been really distracted lately. It's not like you. Genuinely, it concerns me."

"No, I'm not," Hermione deadpanned. "At least, as far as I know."

"Ignore Ron, Hermione," Harry said from beside her, without looking up from the Daily Prophet. "He was born severely tactless."

Throughout the entire length of breakfast she resisted the urge to look across the hall to the Slytherin table. The flash of blond in the corner of her eye teased her incessantly, and her only respite was when breakfast was done and they all stood to gather their things and continue on to class. She managed to catch a glimpse of him, then, and realized she had no idea what she had been expecting. He looked exactly the same: the same curled lip and bored, superior demeanor. Had she expected anything different?

"Something wrong, Hermione?" Harry asked her, catching her gaze towards Malfoy.

"No," she said quickly, suddenly feeling very stupid. "Not at all."

Harry looked at her for a long moment, and she cast her eyes down, fiddling with her napkin. "Have you heard from your dad?" he asked.

"No," she said, almost automatically. She knew she shouldn't feel bitter about it, but she was. Even prison inmates were better at responding to letters than her own father. "Not even once."

"I'm sure he's fine," Harry said, giving her a careful smile, before going back to his paper. Which was nice of Harry, but she had sent him seven letters. How many letters had to go unanswered until she could officially say that no, her father was not "fine"? Over the last few weeks, even she realized she had to reacquaint herself with the definition of what exactly "fine" was, especially with McGonagall and her friends checking in on her every so often. It seemed like such a _safe_ word – neither here nor there – and it said absolutely nothing about anything.

ooo

It was impossible not to hear the rumors going on the halls about Malfoy having saved her that night. One particular version had her passed out in the Forbidden Forest in the nude, and another had her in the abandoned bathroom, having slit her wrists over her mother's death. The speculation didn't bother her so much – even though Hermione had always hated scandals – but there was nothing she could do about it, except wait for everyone to get bored with it and move on to the next remotely scandalous thing. So that's what she did.

During Herbology, everybody was in the field tending to their projects, dressed in protective gardening suits. She had been checking the root growth of her project when she suddenly felt something cold and heavy shower down on her head.

She looked up to see Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Bullstrode, and Lacey Larkin standing above her.

"Oops," Pansy said, holding an empty bucket. The two girls behind her snickered.

Hermione gritted her teeth and shook the dirt out of her hair. Just this once, she wished Madam Sprout had allowed them to bring their wands with them to the field. Just this once.

"Look at the little Mudblood, covered in dirt," she smirked. "So natural, don't you think, girls? The little Muggleborn in her natural habitat." Pansy crouched down a little, her face hovering just inches from hers. Her eyes twinkled with delight. "How do you think your mum likes it, Granger? You know, buried six feet deep in the soil, where she belongs."

And then with a twitch in her smile, she stood back up. Hermione sat there, watching after her as she sauntered away with her group, flipping her hair. She didn't know what came over her then. At first she felt paralyzed with both anger and hate, and then the next thing she knew, she was back on her feet and walking after her.

She reached out her hand and pulled Pansy's hair, yanking her head back. Pansy screeched in pain, before whirling around, her hair disheveled and her eyes narrowed and dark.

"You bitch!" she screamed, before lunging at her.

Hermione had never been in a physical fight before, so she assumed whatever came over her then was purely primal. Pansy lunged at her, and soon she found herself pushed down on the ground, with Parkinson straddling her. She was screaming, and Hermione had her hands on her face, clawing at whatever she could reach. She even punched her, which made Pansy's hands fly up to her face, and Hermione took this opportunity to switch their positions.

"Who do you think you are, you pureblood skank?" Hermione hoarsely yelled at her, before she suddenly found herself getting picked up from behind, lifting her to her feet and restraining her.

A group had formed around them now. Madam Sprout came rushing through the crowd, and Blaise Zabini was holding Pansy back, who was still screaming and trying to break free to get at Hermione.

"You fucking Mudblood! I'll kill you, you hear me?" Pansy was shrieking. "You're dead! Just like your dead mum!"

Professor Sprout stopped dead in-between them. If Hermione hadn't already begun to feel the wrongness and humiliation of her actions, she would have laughed at the sight of Pansy. Covered in dirt, with her hair sticking up all over the place, and a purple shadow under her eye – a sign of a pending bruise. And what a beautiful bruise that would soon be. If only Hermione could wear it on her jumper as a pin of achievement.

"Girls!" Madam Sprout said, in horror. "What kind of savage behavior is this? What in Merlin's name has gotten into you two?" She glared at Pansy, and then at Hermione. "Granger, you are Head Girl. Have you forgotten?"

Hermione swallowed hard. She wanted to say, "Yes, Professor, I had forgotten. I'd forgotten that as Head Girl, I was supposed to let the vilest girl in school make fun of my dead mother." But she didn't. Instead she just looked away.

"Detention for the both of you," she said. "You'll be meeting with your Heads of House for this. Malfoy, Zabini, lead them to their offices. Everyone, get back to work. Stop your gawking," Sprout said, barking at everyone.

Hermione froze and found herself almost holding her breath when she realized who it had been to drag her off of Pansy and restrain her. Malfoy?

Zabini lead Pansy away first. He let her go, and with one last withering glare and derogatory statement, he led her away. As soon as she was gone, she felt the tight hold on her disappear, and they began walking back to the school, to her Head of House's office. She snuck a glance at who it was beside her. Sprout was right. It was Draco Malfoy.

"I have to say, Granger," she heard him drawl, "I didn't think you had it in you."

She didn't know why, but she was afraid to look at him. She looked straight ahead with her hands balled into fists. Her neck felt sore, and the side of her face stung. If she didn't know any better, she would have thought Pansy kept her nails long on purpose.

"You're decent with a wand, but when it comes to Muggle fighting? Your Muggle ancestors would be proud." His voice was dripping with mockery.

She turned her head to glare at him. "Shut up, Malfoy."

He even had the gall to pretend to act surprised.

"You saw what she did," she hissed at him. "You saw her and her stupid posse pour that bucket of soil over my head, and you did nothing. Some Head Boy you are!"

He rolled his eyes. "I don't think you're in the position to be pointing fingers at superior Head student skills right now. Might I remind you that _I'm_ the one who has to accompany you on your walk of shame after you nearly clawed out Parkinson's eyes?"

"If you'd done your job as Head Boy, you wouldn't have to!"

His eyes flashed when he looked at her, his upper lip curling in annoyance. This was more of the Malfoy she recognized. Finally, something familiar in a world so different from the one she remembered leaving, all those months ago.

"Don't blame me for your lack of self-control," he sneered at her. He stopped in his steps, nodding to their left. "We're here."

She looked. He was right. They were standing in front of McGonagall's office. Briefly, as she looked at him, she remembered him from that night, standing at the foot of the hospital bed with his bloodied shirt. _You owe me a new coat._

He gave her one last look before he turned and resumed walking back down the hall. She stood there for a few moments, watching after him. It was true, Malfoy had always been lax when it came to his Housemates. He tended to turn his head away in feigned ignorance whenever he caught his own House up to improper ordeals – so why had she expected any different today? Of course he would have stood by and watched Pansy pour dirt over her head and mock her mother, only stepping in when things got really serious – and only then to save his position as Head Boy. He was Draco Malfoy.

So then why had she been holding on to this bizarre idea that he had changed?

The office door opened, and she heard her Head of House's voice summon her in. Taking a deep breath, she straightened herself up and walked through the doorway.


	3. Pansy's Revenge

A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing! It feels great to be back in D/Hr mode again!

* * *

(Chapter Three)

"I must say, Miss Granger," McGonagall was saying, as Hermione found herself stiffly seated on the armchair opposite of her, "I am disappointed in your chosen course of action with today's events. I know that Parkinson is a vile little cretin, but I was expecting more out of you."

For the first time, her Head of House glanced up at her behind her half-moon shaped spectacles. Hermione stared at her in mild shock. She knew her Head of House could be blunt, but calling Pansy Parkinson a "vile little cretin" was certainly new.

"I am sure she deserved it." McGonagall put her parchment away, setting her quill back on its stand. She leaned back to look at her. "That much is always evident. However, that still does not excuse violence, do you understand, Granger?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, Professor."

Her professor sat there for a moment in silence. Hermione couldn't stand the look of soft pity in her eyes, so she looked away. "I'm sensing a change in you, Granger. The part that worries me is that I can't tell whether this is a good change, or a bad one."

When she didn't say anything in response, she dismissed her.

"You have detention with Professor Sprout tomorrow after classes. Parkinson will have detention elsewhere – we wouldn't want to find you two brawling again out in the field." McGonagall gave her a minute smile. Even with her scolding, Hermione still couldn't shake the feeling that McGonagall was still a little proud of her. "Off you go."

When she entered the Gryffindor common room, she found most of her housemates waiting for her. She also found herself being greeted with a smattering of applause.

"There's the woman of the hour!" she heard Seamus say as he beamed with pride, clapping her on the shoulder.

"She definitely tore Parkinson a new one!" Dean said in agreement.

Hermione felt herself flush, turning away from the unwanted attention. In the back of her mind, she argued against McGonagall's claim. _If I really was changing, I would welcome this. But I'm not. I'm exactly the same, _she thought.

Ron called her name as he came running down the stairs, followed by Harry. Ginny followed behind, smiling.

"Oy! Hermione, is it true?" Ron said, grabbing her by the shoulders. He winced when he saw the faint fingernail marks on the side of her neck. "Blimey, you're an absolute savage, you are!" he said, shaking his head with a note of pride and admiration in his voice.

"Stop it, Ron," Hermione said, but even her resolve was weak in scolding him. "It's nothing to be proud of."

"Maybe to you," shouted Neville, "but Parkinson has been a pain in the arse for a lot of us here. And for that, you are a shining jewel to Gryffindor House."

Harry was smiling, laughing to himself, but was not as overjoyed as their other housemates. "Look at you, Hermione, you're a hero," he said to her.

"I'm not. I just got carried away," she said, feeling ashamed. Harry calling her a hero just for punching Pansy Parkinson was a new low for her.

"You should get carried away a lot more often," said Ron, who was now biting into a chocolate frog. When she sent him a stern look, he took it back. "Or maybe not."

"Look, I'm just going to go to my room," she said to Harry. "I've had a long day. I'll see you lot tomorrow."

"Just making sure you're all right, Hermione," he said to her.

She exited through the portrait, but Ginny followed after her.

"Hermione," she said, stopping her. "I just wanted to warn you. Pansy and her group, well. . . they can be pretty brutal. She's known for taking things a bit too far, if you know what I mean."

"I'll be fine, Ginny," Hermione said, already getting a little exasperated with the whole thing. "I'm sure I can handle whatever Pansy throws my way. Honestly."

Ginny smiled reassuringly. "Right. Of course you can."

ooo

The next day, after class, she found herself being handed the chore of organizing Professor Sprout's shed. At first, it seemed like no big deal. Hermione lived to organize. But Professor Sprout's shed was cramped with all sorts of tools, and bags of rotted fertilizer, not to mention nests of insects as big as her hand.

She worked until nightfall, her uniform stained with dirt and dust. She was halfway done organizing one side of the shed when Professor Sprout came and told her she was free to go for the night. She looked at the clock. It was time for supper.

When she arrived at the Great Hall, she saw that Pansy was already at her table, eating and laughing with her friends. She'd heard that she'd had detention with Snape, which possibly meant that she'd had no detention at all. She rolled her eyes as she made her way over to where Harry and Ron were.

"Merlin, Hermione, you stink," Ron said, scrunching up his nose as he bit into a gigantic chicken leg.

"I just got done with detention with Professor Sprout," Hermione said, helping herself to whatever was in front of her. She was starving. "I didn't have time to clean up."

"How long are you supposed to report to her?" asked Harry.

"Tomorrow night will be my last. I get harsher punishment on account of how I'm Head Girl," she explained, a bit bitterly.

"Not so smug about being Head Girl now, are you?" Ron said.

Hermione ignored him for the rest of the night.

ooo

Her last night of detention was rather painless, even though the hours seemed to tick by arduously slow. She was able to finish up organizing the shed, and even managed to clean up the thick layer of dust that had swallowed up the entire room. By the end, it was still some kind of accomplishment, and she couldn't help but feel a little proud. It reminded her of spring cleaning, back home. No magic, just her and her mum, putting things away in boxes and dusting all the furniture while her mum played her favorite records. Afterwards, they would always order in some pizza and watch old movies on their television.

The night after detention, she was on her routine after-hours patrol. She'd gone down the corridors and checked all of the empty classrooms. Not once did she happen to come across Malfoy, which made her both relieved and anxious, for reasons she couldn't fathom.

She was up in the Astronomy tower when she saw it. A little flash of motion, a twinkle of light, heading into a classroom. Keeping her wand close, she followed after it.

"Hello?" she called out. "This is the Head Girl. It's after-hours, you aren't supposed to be out here. Come out, so I can see you."

Except nothing did. She stood in the classroom, a tiny beam of light being emitted from her wand. The classroom, from what she could see, was empty.

She heard a faint noise behind her. But before she could turn around, she felt something hit her in the back of the skull and a bright haze of light fill her eyes. And then everything was black.

ooo

When she finally regained consciousness, she found herself staring at a scattering of trees. There was hardly any light but she could see the silhouette of them from the brightness of the moon, and hear the bristling of the leaves and branches in the wind.

When she tried to move, she found that she couldn't. She looked down, her head sore and throbbing. She was tied to a tree.

"Look who's awake for the party," she heard someone say. Pansy Parkinson sauntered into her view. She was fiddling with her wand, smiling wickedly. In Pansy's pocket Hermione could see her own wand, sitting there uselessly. Instantly, she felt a distinct kind of fear fill her. Ginny had warned her about this, but she'd never known the true extent of Pansy's revenge and bloodlust. She'd thought it be something like a hex to make her hair fall out, or an itching curse. Never anything this sinister.

"Pansy, this isn't funny," she said, struggling. The ties didn't budge.

"Of course it isn't, not for you," she said, sweetly. "But for us, it's a big laugh. Isn't it, girls?"

As if on cue, the three of them began cackling. Hermione uselessly struggled against her binds yet again, kicking her feet.

"Let me go," Hermione said through her teeth.

Pansy shook her head, tsking. "Not yet, Granger. Somebody's been a very bad Mudblood, and she needs to learn her lesson. So she's going to learn it. Tonight."

Hermione watched as she cast a silencing charm. She felt dread overcome her, but closed her eyes just as Pansy pointed her wand at her.

"Crucio."

Instantly, she felt pain wash over her body, like a thousand hot knives piercing right through her. She could feel her body convulsing against the binds, her skull knocking back against the tree, almost blacking out her vision. She screamed but nothing came out, just terrifying silence, and the sound of her body as it flailed uncontrollably.

When it ended, her eyes were still shut so tightly she saw white. She could feel sweat pouring down her neck, her heart beating a million times a minute. Her ears rang from the pain. She never felt more grateful in her life. Her bones felt like they had been disintegrated, and she fell limp against her binds.

"Well, that was fun, wasn't it?" she heard Pansy say. "But I daresay I don't think you've learned your lesson yet, Granger. I just didn't feel like you _meant_ it."

The pain returned. This time, it lasted longer – forever, it seemed like. She wasn't aware she had started to cry, until she tasted her tears, which had begun running down her face. Subconsciously, she begged to die.

It stopped only for a second before Pansy raised her wand and uttered the curse again. Faintly, she could hear Millicent uncertainly ask Pansy if they should head back to the castle.

Even Lacey Larkin had recoiled, terror written on her face. "Pans, we should head back. Really."

That night, Hermione lost count of how many times she uttered the curse. She wasn't able to keep a clear thought through it all, just the repeating plead of either death or an end, biting down on her lip until she could taste the blood. She was barely conscious when Pansy finally tucked her wand back into her pocket and came close to her.

"I hope you enjoyed that, Mudblood," she hissed at her. "Because I did."

And then she spat in her face.

She could hear their footsteps as they walked away, snapping twigs under their weight, leaving her all alone in the woods.

ooo

She woke up to the feeling of falling, hearing the thud of the solid weight of her body as she fell down to the ground. Her mind was aware, but when she willed herself to move, her body didn't respond. It was as if all of her nerve endings had been cut off – surprising, since they had been working quite well last night while Pansy tortured her.

She could hear the sound of the morning – birds and wind – as well as someone breathing heavily, faint footsteps against the dead leaves. She felt someone turn her over and attempt to sit her up. Something warm and heavy settled on her shoulders, shaking her.

"Granger, can you hear me? Open your eyes."

She willed her eyes to open. After a few moments, she finally opened them to see a blurry face peering at her, close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. It took a few seconds until her vision cleared, and that's when she realized who it was that had cut her down from the tree.

"I need to get you to the hospital wing. Can you move?"

She swallowed hard. Her throat was so dry it felt like trying to swallow sharp, jagged rocks. As she watched him, his gray eyes hard and determined, she wanted to tell him no. _No_, she thought. _Not you. I don't want be indebted to you even more than I already am. Please, just leave me here_.

"No," she said. Her voice was hoarse and barely recognizable.

His eyebrows shot up his forehead. "No?"

"I'll be fine," she said to him. "Just give me a minute."

His expression hardened as his surprise fell away. "You just spent the night tied up to a tree. God knows whatever else they did to you, and you're refusing to go to the hospital wing. This is priceless."

She bit back the urge to snap at him and say, _What do you care if I spent the night bound to a tree or not? It was your House that did this to me_. Instead, she stared at him. "How did you find me?"

Something flickered across his face. "You never showed up at the end of patrol. I figured something must have happened. I'd patrolled the entire castle, so I knew you weren't there."

"Does anybody else know I was gone?"

"No." His face turned impatient. "Look, do you want to go to the hospital wing or not?"

She tried getting up, her limbs still shaky and stiff. "They won't find anything wrong with me, Malfoy. I'm not going."

She bit her lip as she tried to stand, balancing her weight. Going to the hospital wing was just a waste of time, not to mention it would cause a big fuss. The Cruciatus curse left no mark, and she knew what was wrong with her. She was dehydrated and exhausted. That was it.

Before she knew it, Malfoy had wrapped one arm around her, steadying her posture. She was only mildly aware of how strong he must have been, as once he'd had a hold of her, she felt only a little of her weight resting on her legs. As he helped her out of the woods, she could smell him. He smelled like mint and smoky firewood and clean laundry, combined.

It was still so early in the morning. The sun was barely up, and the sky was slowly lightening. From the distance she could still spy the firelight from the windows of the castle.

"You're a magnet for trouble, Granger," he drawled, but there was a telltale edge to his voice. "Tell me, is masochism a House trait?"

She ignored his question. "I don't look for trouble."

"Let me guess," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "trouble finds _you_."

She didn't answer him for a while, because for once, she couldn't dispute her bad luck. Ever since her mum passed away she seemed to be on a streak of injury and harm. She bit her lip, trying to decide whether to tell Malfoy that Pansy had used the Cruciatus curse on her. Though she doubted that would surprise him. Half of all Slytherin House was associated with the Dark Lord through their parents' alleged allegiance. They had all probably learned the Dark curses the day they learned how to walk.

"It looks to be that way," she finally said to him.

He kept his face straight ahead, and they both succumbed into silence as they neared the castle. As they walked she kept getting flashbacks from last night. Pansy standing in front of her, the look of hesitation and uncertainty on both Millicent's and Lacey's face. Hermione looked down at her robes. Her wand, which had been in Pansy's robes, was back inside her pocket. How had that happened? She couldn't recall anytime last night when Pansy had given her back her wand.

Just as she was about to ask him, they were already in the castle. She stopped them.

"You can let go," she said to him. "I'll be fine from here."

This was half-true; she felt like she had regained a little bit of her strength. Enough to walk up to her room, anyway.

He let her go, and she swayed a little before she steadied herself. She tried not to notice when he watched her carefully.

"Thanks, for going out to find me," she said, her voice barely above a mutter. She wasn't exactly used to saying thanks to someone who blindly hated her for her blood.

"I'm Head Boy," he said to her, his voice a little sharp. "It'd be a little suspect if I sweetly slumbered while you were out tied to a tree, don't you think?"

His response made her feel better – annoyed, which was more familiar than feeling grateful to him. She had mixed feelings about it. Of course he had gone to look for her because, if everybody had woken up the next morning with her missing, his position as Head Boy would be under major scrutiny. That would mean his reputation and the certain privileges that came with being Head Boy would be at stake. He was right. He was absolutely right.

She shifted her weight between her feet. "Right." She paused, hesitant. "How's your mum?"

"Worse," he said, before he promptly turned away and began walking down the hall, towards the dungeon. Hermione, bristling just a little at his cold brush off, slowly made her way up to her room.

oooo

It wasn't like Granger to be late. He hated that he knew that, but it was true. He spent twenty long minutes waiting for her at the end of patrol, and when there was no sign of her, he knew something was amiss. Begrudgingly, he asked the portraits if they'd seen her, and they'd told her that they had last seen her heading towards the Astronomy Tower. He checked there, but there was nothing.

As he looked for her, with a dark feeling at the pit of his stomach, he couldn't help but feel irritated with her. First with her slip-up at Hogsmeade, and now with disappearing while out on patrol. What was she aiming at, exactly? Had her mum's death sent her over the edge, and now she was on some kind of dramatic kick? It was definitely unlike her. Granger wasn't one of those girls. In fact, he was certain that she would blend into the walls of this dull place if her hand wasn't shooting up every three seconds and she wasn't arrogantly spouting some kind of unnecessary information.

He found himself heading to the Slytherin dungeons before it all clicked in his head. He barked the password to the portrait, and as he walked in, he found Parkinson and her two minions frantically huddled together in the common room. When they saw him, they silenced instantly and exchanged a look of apprehension.

"What are you still doing up?" he snapped at them. "You three should be in bed."

Without saying a word, the two began heading towards the girls' dormitories. Pansy sent him a haughty look before following.

"Not you, Parkinson."

She froze in her step, her back turned to him. In front of her, Millicent and Lacey glanced at her nervously, but disappeared up the stairs.

He walked closer to her, and she slowly turned around. She looked at him with hard eyes, but he could sense a little fear in her, the way her eyes flickered elsewhere when he came too close.

He counted two wands on her. One in her robes pocket, and another in her hand. He disarmed her, and she flinched as her wand clattered across the room.

"What do you want, Draco?" she asked him. Her voice shook.

"Where were you?" he asked her.

"I left my book in the Potions classroom. Millicent and Lacey went to retrieve it with me."

Pansy was a terrible liar – something she'd inherited from her parents, or so Lucius had told him. "So where's the book?"

She stiffened. Her hands clenched by her side. "It wasn't there. I must've left it somewhere else."

He slid the wand out of her front pocket, and she watched him do it, a sour look dawning on her face. He recognized the wand immediately. He'd had it pointed in his face too many times not to, and he realized this with certain derision.

"Where is she?" he asked her, lowly.

"Someplace real comfortable," she spat. "You'd be real proud, Draco."

Suddenly, she found the head of his wand digging into the side of her throat. She sucked in a breath, her eyes widened in shock.

"I don't think I have to tell you what trouble your stupidity has caused our House lately, Parkinson. Tell me where she is. I won't ask you again."

Her eyes narrowed at him with spite. "In the Forbidden Forest, tied up."

"Good girl," he said, before he stepped back. His wand left a telltale mark on the sensitive skin of her throat, and she rubbed it, annoyed.

"You think _I'm_ a disgrace to Slytherin House?" she called after him, as he exited the dungeons. "Take a good look at yourself, Head Boy Draco – saving Mudbloods at every chance you get! That's a new low, even for a Malfoy!"

He tried to ignore Pansy's words, even when they followed him all the way out to the woods.

He found her in exactly the manner Pansy described: bound to a tree in the middle of the woods, her head bowed in unconsciousness, her brown hair disheveled. He knew better than to believe that Pansy had just knocked her out and then tied her to a tree. If that was true, Granger would have looked better than this. He'd seen how sinister Pansy could get with people she genuinely did not like, and Granger had humiliated her in front of the entire school.

Her body fell forwards with a simple unbinding charm, her face landing on the forest floor. He rolled her over and tried sitting her up, brushing her hair out of her face. Her skin was pale and dirty, there were dark, purple bruises underneath her eyes, and her bottom lip was crusted with dried blood.

"Jesus, Granger," he whispered to himself. And he thought he'd known bad luck, looking at his own father.

He took her by the shoulders and tried to shake her awake.

"Granger, can you hear me? Open your eyes."

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Please review!


	4. Narcissa's Boy

Thanks for reading and reviewing! Totally relieved to know that people still read my stuff! :c)

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(Chapter Four)

The ticking sound of clock hands, ever-moving, had become a constant in his life. So had the arrangement of his mother's room, the smell of lilies and baby's breath wafting from the corner of her room, and the weak and ragged sound of her breathing. Klaus, their house-elf, also made appearances.

"I'm so lucky," Narcissa breathed, smiling. Her body rose and fell weakly underneath the duvet, her face nearly as white as her hair. "My sweet little Draco by my bedside at all hours. How did I get such a devoted son?"

"Save your strength, mother," he said, albeit a little sourly. "Don't talk."

"You are just like your father, Draco," she said, ignoring him. "He used to be right where you were, you know. Sitting all day long by my side, telling me stories or reading me books."

Draco closed his book, feeling his temper flare at the mention of his father. "Used to. Before he decided doing the Dark Lord's bidding was more important than having you get well again."

That was why he was here, after all. His father had sent him an owl that he had to go away – never much detail when those kinds of things were concerned – and Draco knew what that meant. His sick mother, all alone at the manor, while Lucius played the part of being the Dark Lord's oh-so-willing bitch, yet again.

She looked at him. He couldn't stand it when she looked at him that way – all soft, with pity in her eyes, yet with an enormous amount of love. "One day you'll understand why your father has to do what he does. I'm not angry with him, and you shouldn't be."

Draco abruptly stood up, walking over to her balcony. He set aside the heavy curtains, just a little, to see outside. Their acres of green gardens, all blooming with flowers now. He remembered that this was his mother's favorite time of year, and that she would take daily walks out in the gardens once the flowers had all bloomed. He remembered this because when he was younger, she used to take him with her, and tell him about every kind of flower.

"I love that garden," he heard his mother say, faintly. "I've always wanted to have a wedding in it. Yours, particularly."

Draco bristled. "Mother, you really shouldn't talk. You need to save your strength."

As always, she ignored him. "A week ago, I had a dream that you got married, and it was in our garden, just like I wanted. It made me so happy. You looked so handsome in your wedding robes, Draco. If I could only just see you married. . . I would die happy."

He turned around. "Don't say that," he said to her, sharply, his voice harsher than he intended. He calmed himself down, lowering his voice, turning away from the view of the garden. "You're going to see me married, Mother. Maybe even two or three times."

She laughed, closing her eyes. "Weddings are a good thing, Draco. But you can have too much of a good thing, too. I want you to find a nice girl, someone you love, and marry her. One girl, if you can help it."

Draco sat back down. "And pure-blooded, of course."

Narcissa was silent for a moment, before she opened her eyes again. "If you get to be so lucky. But we don't get to choose who we love, Draco. No matter how badly we want to, it's not up to us." And then she smiled. "It's okay not to play by the rules anymore, son. Things will be different for you. Do what makes you happy."

"What would make me happy," he said quietly, "is to see you well again."

"Then it'll be."

And then she closed her eyes.

ooo

On his last day before he had to return to school, Klaus appeared right before his mother dozed off to sleep. His sudden arrival woke her right up.

"Klaus! I'm so glad you're here. I'd almost forgotten."

Klaus bowed his head and presented something in his hand, wrapped in a velvet cloth. "Klaus has brought what Madam has requested."

"Fantastic," Narcissa said, an excited sparkle in her eyes. She tried sitting up, and Draco leaned over to help her. "Oh, I'm fine," she said, shooing him away. "I can sit up in my own bed – I'm not entirely helpless, you know." She gestured to Klaus. "Draco, I had Klaus get this for you. It's an interesting little trinket, and I thought you'd like it."

Draco took the object from Klaus, who then bowed his head again and disappeared with a poof. He held it in his hand – it felt like a paperweight, just less heavy. It was flat and rounded at the edges. He unwrapped the cloth to find himself staring back at him – it was a mirror. A pocket mirror, to be exact, with thin gold trimming along the edges.

"It's a pocket mirror," he said, his voice lackluster. "Mother, I know I'm dashing, but I've already got one of these." Or five, to be exact.

"Not just a pocket mirror," she said. "It's a strange one. I found it when I was perusing the alley stores once. I'm not exactly clear what it does, but the owner told me that the mirror shows you the person who needs you most. I figured you could use it at school, for the times I can't write back to you."

He stared at it, and soon his face disappeared. He could see his mother's face in the mirror now, smiling, sitting up in bed. He shoved it in his pocket, feeling something swell in his throat.

"Thanks."

"Write to me often," she said to him. "I'll have Klaus read them to me. And if I don't write back, write to me even more."

He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, which was cool and clammy. His mother knew it, and so did he. She never even had to ask, but she loved to ask anyway.

ooo

He could feel the weight of the mirror in his pocket as he walked along the train, searching for the right compartment. When he finally found it, he opened the compartment to find somebody already there. Not just anybody – because that would have been too easy – but Granger, sitting there, with a large book in her lap.

She looked up at him with those innocent doe eyes of hers, as if surprised to see him there. He banged the door shut behind him, shooting her a look, before wordlessly settling on the seat across from her. He could feel her staring at him, and that didn't help his already foul mood.

Vaguely he remembered the rumors from school about why she was on this train. She'd left months ago, just some time before he did. It was something to do with her dead mum.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked, clearly annoyed.

He thought about what a happy and peaceful train ride it would be, not to hear her voice the entire way to Hogwarts. Or to block her existence out entirely.

"Let's pretend for a second, Granger, that whatever I happen to do with my life is any of your business," he barked at her. "Oh look, second's up."

Thankfully, that got her to shut up. She sent him a withering glare before embedding her face back into her book. He watched her as she turned a page, and then stayed that way.

He retrieved the mirror from his pocket, looking into it. He saw his mother in bed, with Klaus tending to her. She was saying something to him in a whisper, but her eyes were closed and she seemed weak. For a time, when he'd been with her, she seemed to get better – laughing and talking. When he'd left, she'd tried to put on a show that she was feeling better, but he'd seen right through it. She was back to getting worse. This was exactly what he'd been afraid of.

He watched her for a minute more before he tucked the mirror away and closed his eyes. He tried to clear his mind to will himself to sleep – even in the comforts of his own home, he'd had trouble sleeping at night. He figured it had something to do with his mother's wheezing or the times he woke up to find her not breathing at all. Sooner or later, he found himself drifting in the in-between of consciousness and sleep – the limbo, comfortably dark yet still partially aware. He could still feel the movement of the train and hear Granger as she flipped the pages in her book. He couldn't even remember really sleeping anymore – fully, actually sleeping. For so long, it had been just this. This pathetic in-between.

When he opened his eyes back up again, Granger still had her face in the book. He watched her, her slender body leaned against the back of the seat, moving her feet from time to time. She crossed and then uncrossed her legs, moved her hand behind the book to bite her thumb nail, or to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. Not once did she put her book down. Her focus was unnerving.

She seemed no different from when her Muggle mum was still alive. Quieter, maybe – but that was because she was stuck here with him. Maybe if she was here with Potter and Weasley she'd be laughing it up and having a party.

"How did she die?" he asked, his bored drawl breaking the silence. He watched her slightly shift from behind her book, but it took a minute for her to respond.

"Cancer," he heard her say, a bit hesitantly. "Then a brain aneurysm."

He only had a vague idea of what these terms meant – but maybe that wasn't important. What was important was what they ultimately meant, in the end. Which was this: death.

He said it before he had even decided to say it. "Heavy," he said. Just that. He wasn't even exactly sure what he was referring to, or what exactly it meant. But maybe that was the point. How could anyone really understand the depth of somebody else's loss?

She didn't put down her book but he knew she was no longer reading. She was completely still now. No more crossing and uncrossing of her legs, or biting her fingernails, or tucking away a wayward curl. You always knew when somebody was paying attention when they forgot themselves.

After a few more moments of silence, he'd thought their conversation was officially over. Just as well, it left a strange feeling in his stomach, talking to her this way. So he closed his eyes and began drifting towards that in-between state again.

That was when she spoke up.

"What good is magic," she asked, her voice soft, "if you can't save the people you love from dying?"

He slowly opened his eyes, feeling a weird swell in his throat at her question. How many times had he thought this, abstractly? Thought it, but never formed it into actual words – into an actual thought – because if he did, it would mean that magic had failed him? Magic, the sole entity that separated him from the lowly beings of the Muggle world. Magic, which made him and the rest of the wizards of the Wizarding World infinitely superior to them.

And then she said it. Granger, out of all people. Of course it would've been her to say it. Nobody else could have.

He felt something coming up his throat, but he swallowed it down. He watched her as she continued to read her book afterwards, not saying another word to him. He felt relieved at this, because conversing with Granger was not exactly high on his Favorite Things list. But it left him wondering what she was thinking, too – and for once, though he'd never admit it, he really wanted to know.

ooo

Draco fiddled with the mirror, having paused his progress on his latest Defense Against the Dark Arts essay. He tried to catch light with it, except the light never rebounded from the surface like it usually did with other mirrors. The last time he'd looked in it was a few hours ago, and he'd looked in as Klaus was reading one of his letters aloud to his mother. She seemed barely awake at the time, but at least her breathing seemed evenly paced.

The night he'd caught Granger on the Astronomy Tower, looking forlorn and distant, he'd divulged something to her. Private thoughts – thoughts he never thought he'd say out loud to anyone, not even Snape. And yet something about her that night, something sad and dark, made him say it, because he knew that somehow she'd understand. It didn't help that ever since that day they'd shared the train together, coming back to Hogwarts, he couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said, either. The more he thought about it, the more he started to believe that their situations were frighteningly similar. Not exact – not yet, at least.

It was only after the heavy weight in his chest had disappeared that it dawned on him what he'd done, revealing such intimate details about his life. The way she was looking at him – definitely not in a way she'd ever looked at him before – made something in his stomach turn and made him want to say something mean to her so that she'd stop. Even though it comforted him, it scared him more.

So he did the next best thing: he deducted points from her House for slacking off.

After that night, he'd done a good job of avoiding her as much as possible. He didn't want her to think that he was her _friend, _after all. She had enough friends standing by to lend her a shoulder to cry on. He, on the other hand, was doing perfectly fine by himself, and could do without the association.

He had been turning the mirror in his hand when he saw it. One turn, it was his face, and the next, it was something else. Curious, he stopped it, and peered into the mirror.

It was raining and gray, with hazy orange windows in the far distance. He recognized the place. It was Hogsmeade, in a shortcut alleyway not far from the Three Broomsticks. Crabbe and Goyle had jumped a first year Hufflepuff in this alley a few years ago. He watched on, confused. Why was the mirror showing him an alley in Hogsmeade?

That was when he saw her. Lying on the stone ground, her eyes closed, with rain pelting her white face. Behind her head he could see a distinct shade of red. Blood.

Something cold and hard gripped him from the inside. He stared at the image of her in the mirror, unmoving. His mother's echoed through his brain. _The mirror shows you the person who needs you most_.

He clenched his jaw, looking away. Surely this mirror was mistaken. He was the last person that Granger would possibly need. What about Potter, or Weasley? One of her Gryffindor lackeys to help her out of whatever stupid mess she'd gotten herself into this time? Because this definitely was not something he was keen on doing. Saving Hermione Granger – especially when he wasn't even sure he'd be all that morose if she didn't happen to make it out alive.

But as he watched on, nothing happened. Nobody stopped by, nobody appeared to help her up. He wished the mirror would stop showing him this. He even shook it, willing it to go away, to go back to the way it was. But it didn't.

Begrudgingly, he shoved the mirror into his pocket. Then he grabbed his coat.

ooo

When he found her, he found her exactly the way the mirror had shown him. Lifeless, sprawled out on the wet stone floor, with a trail of blood mixing along with the ruddy rainwater. He muttered a few choice curse words to himself as he checked her pulse and then picked her up with both arms. He grunted, checking to see if there was anyone watching, before he began to walk back to the castle.

Halfway there, he heard her voice. He looked down to see her squinting up at him, having finally regained some consciousness. She kept looking at him in astonishment and confusion, before she closed her eyes, as if defeated. "Oh, shit. I'm dead, aren't I?"

He rolled his eyes. "Unfortunately, no. But you might be concussed, so stay awake, Granger."

It was only a few seconds before he felt her body go limp again, her head falling back. He shook her awake, and her eyes sleepily fluttered open.

"Jesus Christ," he said to her. This was definitely not what he had signed up for. Was it too late to dump her back on the ground and just leave? "I said _stay awake_, Granger. I thought you lived to follow instructions. Why don't you blather on about something?"

He didn't really want to hear it, but if it would keep her awake for at least a few more minutes, then he could somehow deal.

When she spoke, she sounded drunk. Her voice was loose and dreamy, nothing like the concise and sharp tone he was used to from her. And from the smell emanating from her breath, he didn't doubt she was a little bit sloshed.

"My friends think you'd be a good kisser. They don't think you'd slobber all over them like other boys do. Nice boys, I mean. Nice boys always slobber."

He had to admit that her chosen topic of her blathering was a surprising one. It amused him just a little to see her like this. Loose, and unguarded. Really, _really_ unguarded.

"They're right," he gruffly told her. "I don't."

She scoffed, but her eyelids began to fall again. "But I bet you did, once upon a time. Nobody's born a great snogger."

"Well, I'm not just anybody, am I?"

When he looked down, she was asleep again. He shook her back awake, rigorously. She opened her eyes, and he told her he was taking her to the hospital wing. She protested, of course, but she was partly delirious. She mumbled something under her breath. "Hospitals remind me of my mum," he thought he'd heard her say.

When he arrived at the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey ordered him to set her down on one of the beds. Granger watched him through half-lidded eyes. As Madam Pomfrey rushed to her office to get supplies, and he set her down, she whispered to him, "You could have left me there, it would have been fine." He said nothing to her, but tried to ignore the twinge of guilt he felt, knowing that he'd almost done exactly what she'd said.

He stepped back, away from her, and her unfocused eyes followed him. Her hair, dark and wet, splayed out on the white hospital pillows that were quickly darkening with blood.

He ordered her to stay awake, unaware that his throat had suddenly become heavy with concern. As Madam Pomfrey rushed to her bedside and she closed her eyes again, he silently wished he had never gone after her. If he hadn't, he would have never found out that Hermione Granger, the Mudblood he had come to genuinely detest, didn't mind if nobody ever found her, bleeding away on the alleyway floor. That some part of her had actually wanted to die.

He backed away as Madam Pomfrey tended to her. He'd seen much more blood before, but he suddenly couldn't stand to be in the room any longer. Promptly, he turned around and left.

* * *

Please review!


	5. A Head Girl's Duty

**A/N**: I know. I'm totally on crack (metaphorically). Thanks for reading and reviewing, as always!

* * *

(Chapter Five)

Hermione watched Pansy like a hawk for the next couple of weeks. She'd always believed that Parkinson was such a caricature of the Mean Girl cliché – rich, spiteful, enamored with the delusion that she was the object of every boy's wet dream, and constantly surrounded by her Slytherin Housemates to add to her power – but she'd always thought that Pansy was on the petty side of things. Making fun of whatever was most obvious, not exactly a goldmine of witty insults. She was annoying, but at least she was no threat.

That is, until the night they had knocked her out and Crucio'd her in the Forbidden Forest, tied to a tree. At least one thing was still familiar: Pansy's stupidity in letting her keep the memory. Anybody with two brain cells would have figured to wipe out her memory of the event to ensure no retaliation. But of course, Parkinson lacked that kind of acumen. She was both impulsive and stupid, and Hermione almost felt sorry for her.

She didn't want to go to Dumbledore. Not because she thought it would be weak, but because she still had her pride, too. This would be the third unfortunate incident that happened to her this school year, and she didn't think she could stand the whispers and looks of pity.

Even Ron and Harry she kept in the dark. Telling them would only make things worse. She could handle her own problems.

Ron poked her. "Hermione," he said, muttering under his breath. "You're staring at Pansy again."

She coolly moved her gaze away, towards Snape. He was scrawling their needed materials on the board, and she could hear the scratch of everybody's quills as they began to copy it down. She promptly followed, even when Ron's voice interrupted her.

"You've been doing that a lot lately. Staring. At Pansy, mostly. It's a little strange, even for you."

"It's her hair," she said. "It's different."

"Is it?" Ron discreetly turned his head. "Looks the same to me. Then again, I intentionally forget to look at her. She's not exactly pleasing to the visual senses."

Hermione had to bite back her smile.

"Gather your materials," came Snape's voice from the front. "Then partner up. Keep in mind that this is a highly complex potion. Choose your partners wisely."

Ron awkwardly shifted beside her, as everybody erupted into conversation.

"So, erm, Harry? You're better at potion-making than I am. I'm miserable at it. So I think I should pair up with Hermione this time. It's only fair."

Hermione could tell Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "It's fine," he said, just as Dean Thomas sat down beside him.

"Finish copying down the materials and I'll fetch the supplies," Hermione said, getting out of her seat, before she was suddenly stopped by a dark and ominous figure.

Snape looked down at his hooked nose at her, then Ron. "You two," he said. "Separate."

"But we're partners," Ron said, his blue eyes already glinting with annoyance.

"You're partners only when I say you're partners," Snape snapped at him. "I won't tell you again. And Weasley, ten points for defiance." He gave them one last withering look before he went on making rounds.

"That git," Ron muttered. "I'll bet we're the only ones he separates. He really ought to get that stick up his arse removed. Not like anyone would be willing to get close enough to him for that to happen, anyway." He gave her an apologetic look before sluggishly getting out of his seat, craning his head around to find another partner.

Luckily for Hermione, Justin Finch-Fletchley came bounding up to her and asked to be her partner. As they settled down together, she looked across the room to see a morose Ron paired up with Millicent, and Malfoy sitting with Goyle. Malfoy was sneering at Goyle, a puddle of black ink spilling off of their desk.

They quickly got to work on their potion. Snape was right: it was complex. For one, they were supposed to substitute for the materials they didn't have. She could hear everyone flipping through their textbooks for similar herbs and roots, some cursing under their breath. Justin proved just as clueless, but at least he was good with measurements. Hermione handled the problem-solving; he did the mincing and dicing.

Every now and then she looked up to see how her classmates were doing. Ron was red and flustered, with Millicent clumsily hacking away at an elm root. Harry seemed to be focused and collected, with Dean manning the textbook, his quill between his teeth. Across the room, she also spied Pansy, who was checking her teeth via the reflection from a root knife.

"Pans, could you go get the fluxweed powder?" she overheard Lacey Larkin ask her uncertainly. She was looking at their supply list as if it was written in Mandarin.

Pansy opened her mouth, a bothered expression on her face – before Snape appeared at her table, and she instantly plastered on a sickly sweet smile. Hermione got up quickly, brushing her hands off.

"I've forgotten the fluxweed," she told Justin, who barely glanced up at her. She glimpsed back towards Pansy and Lacey. Pansy was still preoccupied with trying to make it seem like she was actually doing work, all the while trying to flatter their Head of House. It still genuinely amazed Hermione what Pansy could do with half a brain sometimes.

She made her way to the storage room. She went straight for the fluxweed, grabbing the last bottle. She grabbed another bottle of gray powder that looked very similar, hellebore, and quickly worked to switch the labels. She placed them in their opposite places, before heading out of the storage room and back to her table.

Justin looked up from his finely ground nettle. "You must have forgotten, Hermione. We've already got fluxweed. Right there." He pointed to a bottle sitting across from him.

"Right. I realized that," she said, sitting down. She discreetly watched the storage room entrance. Pansy was making her way through the tables, shooting disparaging remarks while she traveled – as usual – and Hermione almost leaned back and smiled to herself.

"Hermione, what should we do about this? It says we should have bark from a rosewood sapling," she heard Justin say.

By the time Hermione was done rifling through her notes and had proudly found a valid substitute for the bark of a rosewood sapling they did not have, Pansy was long gone from the storage room. She found her in front of Snape.

"Professor, you've run out of fluxweed. I couldn't find any," she heard her say.

Hermione tensed in her seat.

"That's impossible, Parkinson. I stocked it precisely for this class," came Snape's clipped response. "Check again."

Hermione looked at the rest of her peers, their heads bowed down to their potions. It was possible that Pansy had just missed it. There were thousands of herbs and roots on those four walls, and Pansy wasn't exactly the patient, searching kind. It was very possible she just got lazy. Right?

Pansy rolled her eyes and started back towards the room.

"Give it to me, you dolt. You aren't doing it right at all," said a familiar disagreeable drawl. Before she knew it, a loud bang had gone off in the opposite side of the room, making everyone jump in their seats. White smoke filled the classroom, and everybody tried to plug their noses and fan it away.

"Oh God," she heard Justin groan from beside her. "It smells like rotten eggs and body odor."

Hermione clumsily navigated her way to the explosion. Once the smoke cleared, she found herself looking at a very unconscious Head Boy lying on the floor, with Goyle coughing, his face purple. Snape came with a billow of his dark robes.

"What the devil's name happened here?" he demanded. He picked up a half-empty bottle from their table, which was sizzling, and brought it up to his nostril. "This isn't fluxweed," he said. "This is hellebore." His head snapped up to the rest of the class. "Zabini, Pucey, get Malfoy to the Infirmary. Now."

Malfoy's Housemates emerged from the still crowd. Zabini levitated Malfoy's body off of the floor, and soon they were gone.

"Somebody," Snape said, narrowing his eyes, "has been switching my supplies in the storage room." Hermione watched as Snape's suspicious glare rested on Harry. "Believe that when I catch you, you'll be out of this castle faster than you can fly out on that little broomstick of yours."

Hermione's breath hitched in her throat. If Harry got in trouble for this, she would feel terrible forever. Instantly, she felt shame cover her. What had gotten into her, exactly? It was a stupid scheme to begin with, full of unfavorable variables. Why hadn't she thought it through?

She heard McGonagall's voice echo through her mind. _I'm sensing a change in you, Granger_.

"Now get back to work. I expect those potions to be finished by the end of class."

Everyone began to move back to their seats. She could see Pansy still worriedly glancing at the door.

"Bloody hell," Dean said to both her and Justin, as he sat down. His eyes sparkled with excitement. "Somebody got Malfoy good! If only the brave soul would come forward so I could shake his hand."

Dean dreamily gazed at Harry.

"You'd get nothing out of shaking my hand. It honestly wasn't me," muttered Harry.

Hermione tucked her own hands underneath her chair.

ooo

After class, Hermione heard Snape's booming voice call her out as she stuffed her book into her satchel. She fiddled nervously with the leather strap while both Ron and Harry gave her wary looks, letting her know that they'd be waiting for her in Transfiguration.

She walked up to Snape's desk. It was made out of a kind of dark, rustic wood, which complimented his personality perfectly.

"Granger," he said, his upper lip curling with distaste at her name. "Tell me, do you think I'm stupid?"

"No, Professor," she said. Foul and morally-askew, yes, but stupid, no.

"Then you'd agree that whoever it was that switched the fluxweed and hellebore in my storage room was incredibly foolish in doing so, yes?"

Hermione nodded. She tried to keep the eye contact, but Snape had always been daunting – even to her. Reasonable, since Snape – along with the rest of his Slytherin brood – seemed to exist only to make Gryffindor House miserable.

"I know it was you who switched the bottles, Granger. But since I, unfortunately, cannot send you to the Headmaster without proof, I let you off with a warning – do it again, and I will make sure you regret it." His dark eyes flashed at her. "Go to the Infirmary. Madam Pomfrey will tell you your task."

She walked to the Infirmary, passing their Transfiguration classroom, dreading whatever it was that Snape had handed off to her. It was the general belief that the only way Severus Snape slept at night was knowing that he had made a handful of Gryffindors cry that day. It was juvenile, but she believed it, too. So far, she hadn't seen any reason not to.

She was surprised to see Malfoy sitting up in one of the hospital beds when she entered. He looked at her with a confused scowl, and then with suspicion. It was only slightly different from the way he regularly looked at her, but the usual energy of blind hatred was absent, and that instantly told her that something was amiss.

"Ah, Miss Granger," Madam Pomfrey said, once she saw her. "Good. You're here." She turned to Malfoy. "Mr. Malfoy, you're free to go. Remember what I told you earlier?"

"Go with her, you mean?" he said, scoffing. "You silly bint! I don't even know her."

Hermione blinked. "Madam Pomfrey, what's going on?"

She sighed exasperatedly, giving Malfoy a pointed look. He only crossed his arms and tilted up his head. "When the potion exploded, it temporarily wiped out some of Malfoy's memory. He should be better in a day's time, good as new. It's a good thing he only managed to put in a pinch of that hellebore, or else we'd be dealing with another case entirely."

"But what does any of that got to do with me?"

"Miss Granger, you are Head Girl – it is your duty to take care of your peers. It is also unnecessary to keep a hospital bed occupied for someone who is well enough to walk."

Already, the dread was settling at what they were expecting her to do with this new amnesiac Malfoy. It made her stomach gnarl and twist with discomfort. "But there's nobody else here!"

"I," the nurse huffed, "am not paid to babysit." She turned to Malfoy. "Mr. Malfoy, go with Miss Granger. She'll take care of you. Miss Granger, you can see yourself and Mr. Malfoy out."

Hermione stared after her in disbelief. When she looked at Malfoy, she found his eyes trailing up and down her body. She felt herself flush scarlet. "Hey!"

Malfoy gave her a disapproving frown. "Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm Head Girl," she sighed. "And you're Head Boy. Get up, we've got to go to class."

Surprisingly, grabbing his book bag, he did what he was told. They walked into the hallway, where he kept a safe distance from her, as if unsure. Hermione tried to relax. She told herself that she owed this to him, at least. He'd found her at Hogsmeade and the Forbidden Forest. She would do this, and then they could be even. Even though, technically, she had indirectly done this to him.

"Where are we going?" he asked her.

"Transfiguration."

"Is it fun?"

"It's. . . educational," she said, sneaking a glance at him. His brow furrowed.

"Oh, bloody hell. I know what that means. It's as dull as hellfire, isn't it?"

"No," Hermione said defensively. "It's not. You get top marks, Malfoy. You enjoy it."

"How do you know?" His eyes narrowed at her. "Are we friends? Are we. . . together?"

"No!" Hermione found herself saying, her voice raised. She felt her skin get hot just at the mention of it. Suddenly, she couldn't look at him. "No, um, neither." She cleared her throat. "Like I said. You're Head Boy, and—"

"You're Head Girl, I know, I know," he said, rolling his eyes. "The pudgy nurse already told me all that."

She could faintly hear McGonagall's voice as they walked up the stone stairs. Before they got to the door, Malfoy tugged on her sleeve.

"We're sitting together, right? I won't know anybody in there. Only you."

She stared at his face, cool and blank except for the little concerned furrow of his eyebrows. God, was he handsome. She'd never had the opportunity to really consider the subject when every time she looked at him, he was either smirking in that insufferable haughty way or scowling. It was common knowledge that he was good-looking, of course, just like it was common knowledge that Harry was The Boy Who Lived and that the earth was seventy percent water. But even so, Malfoy's unpleasant personality took away what appeal his looks gave him. To her, at least.

It stunned her a little, to have him looking at her like he trusted her. This was even before she realized how suddenly close they were standing in front of each other. She could still faintly smell the fumes of the potion on him – an acrid, foul smell – but there was a familiar scent still lingering underneath it. For the briefest of seconds, the memory of Malfoy helping her out of the forest flashed inside her mind.

"Of course," she breathed, and then she stepped back, his steely gray eyes following her.

When they entered the class, she heard the simultaneous shuffle as everyone turned around in their seats. McGonagall gave her an acknowledging nod, and she and Malfoy found an empty desk towards the rear of the class. Hermione tried not to notice everyone's avid stares, especially the sneers from the Slytherins. She did, however, look up at Harry and Ron, who were looking at her as if she'd grown a third head and named it Ernie.

"Mr. Weasley," said McGonagall. "Class is up here."

Ron sent her one last deeply confused look before slowly turning back around, towards the board. Hermione sighed to herself as she began taking out her parchments. This was going to be a long day.

ooo

Surprisingly, Malfoy wasn't much trouble. In class, he paid attention, with exception of the times Hermione looked at his parchment and found him doodling Quidditch plays. All in all, Hermione almost couldn't understand how. . . bearable he was, with his memory temporarily wiped out. It was curious to her, too, how he couldn't remember how foul he used to be, yet could recall the Quidditch field and positions with such clarity.

Sometimes he nudged her to show her a doodle he'd made of a professor, and she almost had to force back a laugh.

She only had the chance to catch up with Ron and Harry at the Great Hall. Malfoy had chosen to sit with her, despite her urgings for him to sit at Slytherin. She could already feel the tension stirring as he followed her to the Gryffindor table.

"_Babysit Malfoy_?" Ron choked out. "And I thought getting paired with Bullstrode the Bull for one Potions session was bad."

"I'm right here, you know," Malfoy said from beside her, his mouth full. "I might have lost my memory but I can still recognize the sound of my own name, you idiot."

Hermione rolled her eyes, turning back to Harry and Ron. "It's just for the day. Madam Pomfrey said his memory should be fully intact by tomorrow. He's. . ." Hermione watched as he neatly separated his quiche from the rest of his plate. "Not so bad."

"Malfoy sitting at Gryffindor table for lunch," Harry said, shaking his head. "I wouldn't be surprised if the world were to end tomorrow."

Malfoy was staring intently at Harry. "What the hell happened to your face?"

"Here we go," muttered Ron.

"I mean, you've got a hideous scar on your face," insisted Malfoy. "On your forehead, right there. Did you know that?"

Harry looked like he didn't know whether to be amused or annoyed with Malfoy. "And you know that you've got both girl parts and boy parts down there, don't you?"

Most of Gryffindor table hid their mouths in the crook of their elbows, trying to hold back their laughter. Ron was turning red from trying so hard, his body nearly convulsing.

"What?" Malfoy said, scandalized. "I do not!"

"Go ahead and check," said Harry. "Everybody knows it. If you wanted to, you could have babies. With yourself."

Hermione had to hide her face behind her hands, laughing. "Stop it, Harry. That's cruel."

When she looked up, Malfoy was glaring at Harry. Harry, on the other hand, was smiling triumphantly.

"You know, Hermione," he cheerfully said to her, "this could actually be quite fun."

ooo

After classes, Hermione thought it would be safe for them to go to the library to get some studying done. She was responsible for him until after patrol, and she had to find something for them to do in the meantime.

"I checked, you know," he whispered vehemently to her. "Just as I suspected. I'm all man down there. All man. And your friends are twats with their heads stuck up their arses."

"They were only having a bit of fun," she said. "Totally harmless."

He scowled at her. In the back of her mind, Hermione was still soaking all of this in. Malfoy, sitting with her in the library, in a private corner, telling her that he had checked his package and assuring her that he was all man.

He sighed loudly, leaning back in his chair. "Is this what we're going to do all day? Study in the library?"

"Yes," she said, finishing her Herbology chart. "Later on, we'll go on patrol, and then we'll both be parting ways."

He was silent. Suddenly, she felt something tugging on her hair. When she looked up, Malfoy had caught some of her hair between his fingers. The way he was looking at it – in awe, almost in fascination – made her shiver.

"Your hair," he said to her, quietly. "It's quite soft. It doesn't look it, but it is."

She stared at him, frozen. She didn't know what to do. Malfoy was leaning forwards, playing with her hair, and she was too shocked to move. She reckoned that she should make it a point to stop being so shocked with him, at least for today. The Malfoy here with her now was not the Malfoy he really was.

"Um," she said, slowly pulling away, "thanks."

He leaned back in his seat, boredly watching her. "I've been watching you, and I don't think you've got a boyfriend. At least, not here, in this dump."

"Good observation, but that's none of your business."

"The ginger one likes you, though. The crass, awkward one. But, personally, I don't think you would make a good match." He fiddled with the quill knife.

She was about to tell him, yet again, that it was none of his business – and then she stopped herself. "And what makes you say that?" she asked, just a little intrigued.

He didn't answer. Instead he let the knife fall to the table with a clatter. "This is arse-numbingly dull, Granger. I can't believe this is what you do all day. Let's do something else."

She ignored the slight disappointment she felt when he had brushed off her question. After all, what could Malfoy possibly know about good matches? It was like asking Pansy for advice on how to apply to be a Saint.

She sighed exasperatedly, but closed her book, anyway. "What would you have us do, then?"

His gray eyes glinted with excitement. "Let's go flying."

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	6. Night at the Pitch

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* * *

(Chapter Six)

Having been with Harry and Ron for six and a half years, Hermione knew a bad idea when she heard one. Which was exactly what she told Malfoy, who, naturally, didn't care what she had to say.

"I'm going with or without you, Granger," he'd said to her, grabbing his book bag. "And seeing as how you're responsible for me, I'd advise you to come along. Wouldn't want to disappoint your superiors, would you?"

"You're going to get yourself killed," she said, hurrying after him in the corridor. His long legs made it a battle, trying to keep up. "Do you even remember how to ride a broomstick?"

"Maybe," he said. "Can't be that hard, can it? You just hop on, hold on tight, and fly." Malfoy asked a passing Ravenclaw which way the Quidditch Pitch was, and he pointed the way, albeit a bit bewildered. He quickly moved along without saying thanks.

"Malfoy, I can't let you do this," Hermione said sternly, having finally reached his side.

"I'm Head Boy, Granger," he scoffed. "I think I can do whatever the bloody hell I want."

She rolled her eyes. "Have you forgotten you've got temporary amnesia? I think that calls for a hold on certain activities," she snapped, annoyed.

He guffawed. "Are you always this tightly wound up? Merlin, no wonder you haven't got a boyfriend."

Hermione blinked, feeling as if she'd just been slapped in the face. She faltered a little in her step, slowing down as he kept at his pace, walking towards the Pitch. Not once did he look back at her. He turned around the corner and then he was gone.

She stood there for a moment, glaring at where he once was. She seriously considered just heading back to her room, shutting the door, and going back to her studies – damned whatever it was that Malfoy got himself into. What did she care if he slipped off his fancy little broom and graced the Quidditch field with his priceless pureblood entrails? She'd looked after him enough. Prick.

She leaned against the wall, looking out of the window. She saw a tiny figure emerge from the castle doors, heading across the courtyard. Malfoy.

"Oh, bloody hell," she muttered to herself, before she continued on down the hall.

When she finally got to the Pitch, she was breathing hard and her hip was sore from the weight of her book bag continuously hitting her as she ran. She called out his name. "Malfoy! Malfoy, are you here?"

The Pitch lights were dimly lit, and she could see the moon – a silver eyelash in an inky night sky. Sighing, she dropped her book bag on the grass and walked towards the middle of the field. "Malfoy!"

As she looked around, she didn't see any bodies broken in two on the ground. At least she wasn't too late.

Finally, she saw a figure whizz by above her. He appeared not to have seen or heard her, doing graceful spirals and loops. Hermione watched him, silently. He was right. The way he flew – it was like it came natural to him. There was no awkward fumbling or dodging, just grace and elevation and speed. _Just like Harry_, she thought. Harry was a natural at flying, too. Not as to say they were the same – they weren't. They were strikingly different in the way that they flew. She remembered Ginny telling her once that the way a person flew was like their handwriting – distinct in its own way. It still did the same thing – got you from point A to point B – but the way they went about it, the personal flair, was unique to the person.

She must have stood there for twenty minutes, watching him fly. He didn't seem to notice her there at all. Eventually she sat down on the grass, making herself comfortable.

Sooner or later, Malfoy flew down to her, touching only the tips of his toes to the ground.

"I'm good, aren't I?" he said to her. There was his trademark haughtiness in his voice, but also something else. It was so foreign to her – coming from him – that it took her a few seconds to realize what that odd tone to his voice was: it was happiness.

"I told you you'd have nothing to worry about, Head Girl Granger." He looked at her, his face just a little flushed and his hair windswept. "Do you fly?"

"No," Hermione said, scoffing to herself. She straightened herself up. "I'm afraid of heights."

He frowned. "Do you want to? I'll keep you alive, I promise."

She shook her head, thankful that it was dark enough he couldn't see her blush. Slowly, she was getting used to this Malfoy – a significantly less vile Malfoy – even though she knew she shouldn't. He was a temporary fixture. Tomorrow, everything would be back to the way it was; Malfoy back to his evil ways, and Hermione back to wishing he'd never been born.

"No, thank you. You can keep flying. We've got patrol in an hour and a half, though. The fun ends then."

He thought for a second. His blond hair moved in the breeze. "If I really was Head Boy," he said, touching off the ground, "I could force you."

He flew off again. Hermione watched the ground where his feet had touched, feeling her pulse race. She laid down on the soft grass, looking up at the dark sky. When had she last done this? Stargaze. When she was younger, her dad used to be mad about astronomy. He used to take them out camping just so they could see the stars clearer, and he would bring his telescope – the one his own father had bought for him when he was twelve. He bought her a stargazing book and he pointed out all of the constellations to her, telling her all of the myths and legends behind them.

She remembered something her mum had told her one night, as they watched him with his telescope. "If your dad could have proposed to me with the stars," she'd said, "he would have."

Hermione closed her burning eyes, her chest suddenly feeling tight. She could hear her ragged breathing and tried her best to hold it in. _Don't think about it_, she told herself. _It will do nothing_.

She wouldn't cry here – not for her parents, not while Malfoy was here, having his little joyride on his broomstick. Somewhere private where she could be all alone, just not here.

Just as she hurriedly wiped her eyes, she felt a slight breeze pass her by.

"They have a very special place for people like you, Granger, you know that?" she heard him drawl. "It's called St. Mungo's, and they cater to special needs. Like insanity."

She heard him land on the soft grass, getting off his broom. She suddenly felt very alert, and very aware, as he stood over her.

"What exactly are you doing down there?"

"I'm stargazing," she said.

"Oh," he said. He hesitated, but then sat down next to her, before lying down. "Do you do this often here?"

"No. This is my first time."

She tried to picture this. Her, lying down in the Quidditch Pitch with Malfoy. Malfoy, who announced his revulsion to her every chance he got. She was so used to hating him and wanting to hex off the blond in his hair that in the oddity of today she could feel herself feeling. . . well, odd. He was so close and she could smell him. She'd always thought he would smell like the Eau de Toilette of Evil, but he smelled just like the day he'd helped her out of the forest – far more pleasant than she would ever allow herself to admit.

They were silent for a few moments. He shifted beside her. "I didn't mean what I said before. I mean, I did – but not that way. You _are_ dull, but you're Head Girl, so it makes perfect sense that you're intolerant of any kind of fun."

Hermione found herself almost smirking up at the sky. Draco Malfoy apologizing to her – this was priceless. It was a pathetic apology, to be sure – and not even much of an apology, since he was yet to utter the actual words, "I'm sorry" – but it was endearing, in a way. She figured it was as close to an apology that she would ever get, from someone like him.

"Why aren't we friends?"

"Because I'm dull, apparently."

She could almost hear him roll his eyes. "Yes, but besides that."

Hermione sighed. How could she put this, to a slightly more polite and memory-lapsed Malfoy? "We don't get along. House rivalry and all that," she ended up saying. She wondered, though, how he would react if she told him that it was because she was a Muggleborn. She wondered if deep down – even with some of his memories erased – his revulsion to that would still be the same.

He became silent. She wondered if he had sunk into his own thoughts – and what those thoughts might be. As she laid there and watched the stars, she thought about how this had to be strangest day she'd had in a very long time.

"You know, at first, I thought you looked quite plain. But you're all right, you know. You're pretty when you laugh – even if it is with your twatty friends over calling me a hermaphrodite." He paused, and she realized she was holding her breath. "Do you laugh often?"

"I don't know," she said hoarsely, a fluttering feeling in her stomach. "I used to."

"Used to before what?"

"Before my mum died and my dad stopped speaking to me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She swallowed hard.

"No wonder," she heard him say.

"No wonder what?"

"No wonder you're incapable of having any fun."

When she turned her face to him, he was smirking at her. And as she looked at him, she felt something warm and bubbly fill her lungs, and suddenly – she was laughing. A lot. Laughing like she hadn't, in a long time. She didn't know why. What he said hadn't been very funny, but she just felt like laughing, so she did.

"See? You're completely off your rocker. Laughing at nothing. That's what crazy people do."

Just then, they heard a voice – it echoed through the Pitch, angry and hostile. Before Hermione could get up, she flinched as something white crackled past just a nose hair's distance from her.

"Hey! Mudblood!"

Hermione grabbed her wand, scrambling up, dodging another spell that shot from Pansy's wand. She was getting closer, her eyes livid and flashing at the both of them there, together. Hermione barely noticed when Malfoy had gotten up beside her and had drawn out his wand as well.

"Expelliarmus!" she shouted, at the same time Malfoy had shouted, "Tempus Dormio!"

Hermione watched as Pansy's wand shot out of her hand, and as Pansy, not even a half-second later, collapsed to the ground in a dead sleep.

"Who the hell was that?" said Malfoy, annoyed. "Talk about having a bloody lousy aim."

"It's Pansy," Hermione said, tucking her wand back into her robes, as they walked over to where she was. "She's from your House." _And constantly trying to kill me_, she thought. This whole Malfoy thing must really be getting to her. She considered asking Malfoy if they were secretly together again, but shook the thought away. He barely recognized her; how could he know? Pansy had always been known for her jealous rages over Malfoy.

When they reached her, she was snoring loudly, her skinny arms sprawled out. Hermione walked over to her wand, putting it into her pocket.

"Shit," he said, nudging her with his foot. She snored even louder.

"It's okay," she said. "You're Head Boy, and you can do whatever the bloody hell you want. And she was breaking curfew. Wingardium Leviosa," she whispered, and Pansy's body slowly floated up from the ground. "We need to get her back to your common room."

Malfoy nodded, and they began to briskly walk back towards the castle, with the body grimly floating in front of them.

"Do people always randomly attack you in a blind rage?" he asked, amused. "Maybe you're not as dull as I thought."

Hermione thought for a minute. She felt a sick satisfaction, seeing Pansy unconscious in front of her, hearing her snore like an overgrown pug in a deep sleep. She wondered if she would feel it in the morning if she accidentally lost control of the spell and let her fall, just once, on the very hard ground below.

"I did this to you, you know," she said quietly.

"Did what?"

"This. You, temporarily losing your memory. It wasn't meant for you, though – it was meant for her," she said, nodding to the body in front of her, her tone a little bitter.

He was silent, and she expected for him to get angry. She didn't even really know why she had told him the truth – maybe because, deep down, she knew this was a different Malfoy. An unlearned one, an unpredictable one.

Then again, over the last few weeks, Malfoy had already been somewhat unpredictable – even before he'd been knocked out by the faulty potion. So, to be honest, she didn't know what she had been expecting.

"Tomorrow," he said, oddly serious, "I'll be good as new, right?"

Hermione nodded, feeling a sad weight in her throat. "Just like you were before."

"And will I remember any of this?"

"I don't think so," she answered.

They managed to get through most of the castle without running into anyone – except Filch, who was doing his own patrol. He stopped them, shooting them both suspicious looks, and Hermione explained, quite convincingly, "She tried to attack us while we were on patrol. Malfoy put her to sleep so we could get her back without any fuss." Filch looked at Malfoy, then, who nodded in confirmation. He gave them one last look, gruffly muttering under his breath, before stalking away, down the hall.

Hermione stopped herself once she reached the entrance to the Slytherin dormitories. "Just lay her down on the common room couch," she told Malfoy. He nodded, and she let Pansy's body fall into his outstretched arms. He held her waifish frame with little effort.

"I think we'll skip patrol tonight. We've already had all the excitement that we can handle," she told him, feeling uneasy under his unwavering gaze. It was almost as if they didn't have Pansy's unconscious body in-between them at all. "So you should just head to bed."

He seemed to accept this, because he didn't protest. "Good night, Head Girl Granger," he said to her.

"Goodbye, Malfoy," she said, feeling a faint wave of disappointment wash over her. He gave her a sober nod, before she stepped back and turned around, heading back down the empty hall. She didn't look back, not even when she heard him whisper the password to the Slytherin dungeon, or heard the thud of the portrait door as it swung closed behind him.

ooo

People had long called Draco Malfoy lucky for his circumstance in life – for his wealth, stature, physical appearance, and overall general being – but if that was, in fact, genuinely true, he would have woken up the next day with no recollection of the night before. Or, at least, convinced it was all some strange yet stirringly real dream.

"Bloody Granger," he muttered to himself, rubbing his face.

He remembered yesterday with unshakeable clarity, even from a skewed point of view. It was as if he had been watching everything happen, not exactly sure who it was that had inhabited his body and had gone through these motions. _He_ was vaguely familiar – after all, he was still him, just minus his memory – but the blankness and unawareness he'd had irritated him. He'd asked Granger if she'd wanted a ride on his broom! Hell, she must have laughed at him the moment she'd scampered off for the night, eager to elaborate to Potter and Weasley how pathetic and clueless he was with his memory wiped out.

Not to mention it was all her doing. The only reason he'd gone around acting like a bumbling idiot was because she'd screwed up her revenge scheme for Pansy. Granted, this meant that Perfect Head Girl Hermione Granger had finally fallen a few on her golden pedestal, but why did it have to him that had to be innocently caught in their crossfire? It only gave him another reason to hate her.

He caught her staring at him in the Great Hall, during breakfast. He shot her his usual callous look, and she immediately looked away, her cheeks slightly pink. He'd decided that he was going to play pretend with yesterday's events. It was considerably less humiliating to act like he remembered nothing at all than to acknowledge any of it. He had his pride to think of, after all.

"How are you feeling, Draco?" Blaise asked him, as his goblet filled up with pumpkin juice.

"Peachy," he said dryly, and Blaise seemed to accept this. So did the rest of his House, who had been sneaking glances at him ever since he'd arrived. He wished he could have Obliviated their memory, too – just like he had Obliviated Pansy's, when he'd brought her into the common room last night.

"Word has it that your father's gone missing," he remarked with one brow arched. "My father says that he hasn't shown up to work in months. How else are the Malfoy assets going to keep accumulating?"

He could already hear his Housemates begin to titter. "Worry about your own assets, Zabini," he coldly said back to him. "And I'll worry about mine."

Blaise gave him a haughty smirk, raising his goblet to take a sip. "No problem, Draco."

Once upon a time, Draco had been quite close to Zabini – intellectually, he was on his level, unlike Crabbe and Goyle. It was two summers ago when he had heard rumors that Blaise was vying to be the underling of the Dark Lord – a spot that had so assumedly been reserved for Draco. He wouldn't have believed it if Blaise hadn't shown up in their sixth year dripping with arrogance and claiming what used to be _his_ Slytherin brood as his own. If Draco had cared the least bit about who had the most power in Slytherin, he would have fought back, but he hadn't. He was Head Boy now, after all. He had power, whether or not Slytherin House deemed him deserving of it or not.

When he looked at his old friend Blaise, he pitied him. Maybe it had been Draco's destiny at some point to be the Dark Lord's bitch-in-training, and if so, he was glad he had lost it. He'd seen what it did to his father, how the Dark Lord leeched onto him and robbed him of his dignity (the little he'd had in the first place) and freedom. Maybe Blaise wanted the power and the glory, but he was just an overeager guppy, scrambling for a chance to be important.

He knew this because he'd been there once, himself. And it had been a hell of a time trying to get out of it.

He was making his way to class when Granger caught up to him. Some days he genuinely disliked Head Duties – their forced collaboration was inconvenient when he was trying to avoid her as much as possible.

"Malfoy," she said. She shifted the strap of her bulging book bag on her shoulder, taking out a piece of parchment. "It's your turn to draft the prefect rotation charts."

When he looked at her, the image of her laughing, laying down in the Quidditch Pitch – _like an idiot_, his mind commented – flashed inside his mind. He shook off the odd, unsettling feeling it gave him and snatched the papers from her hand.

"You were supposed to give these to me days ago," he snapped at her.

Whatever strange looks she might have been shooting him in the Great Hall, he was certain they would end here. That glazed, unsure look in her brown eyes were instantly washed out by a familiar tint of annoyance.

"I was going to give them to you yesterday," she said coldly. "But you were—"

He didn't wait for her to delicately pick out the right word to describe his condition. "Sod your excuses. I don't want to hear any of them. Don't fuck up again."

He quickened his pace and left her there, staring after him. He held the parchments tightly in his hand, ignoring the way his heart had begun to race. _Even more reason to avoid her_, he crankily thought to himself.

* * *

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	7. Cruel Intentions

Happy new year to you lovelies! Sorry for the delay on this one (that's the problem with writing a fic that has no clear "blueprint" yet – sometimes you really don't have a clue what to write or what the hell is going on!) but I hope you enjoy! Hint hint: a few juicy developments await you. . .

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(Chapter 7)

Draco Malfoy did not stare. He was sleep-deprived, and Flitwick was busy fumbling over himself to pay any good attention to. These days his mind often roamed around and outside of the castle – more outside than in, predictably, because Hogwarts never held much fascination for him. Unlike Granger. He remembered Granger on their very first day here – how could he not? Even _then_ she'd been annoying, spouting off useless factoid after useless factoid to anyone within an earshot in that grating, little mousy voice of hers. She'd been so terribly Muggle about it all in the beginning, so pathetically eager to excel, like a foreigner trying to learn a new language.

But now, as he watched her rest her chin on her knuckles, looking uncharacteristically unfocused as she doodled on her parchment, he was almost startled at how different she'd become. At how tame her mother's death had made her. She'd been different since that day on the train. Then again, so had he.

He didn't know what it was. She'd lost that bright-eyed Gryffindor naivety he'd despised, that "Justice will prevail!" conviction she carried with her, which was also another reason sitting in a room with her caused his eyes to roll so often that he thought his eyeballs might just stay there, retracted. What a terrifying thought, actually.

He snapped out of it when Flitwick cleared his throat, tapping his wand on the hollow podium. Draco ignorantly looked away, picking up his wand.

From a few seats away, Blaise Zabini smirked to himself.

ooo

Hermione was in the middle of a Transfiguration essay when she saw a dark shadow being cast over her parchment.

"You call these prefect rotation charts?" Draco barked at her. "A five year old with a watercolor set could do better. Do them again."

Hermione stared at the charts he had slapped down in front of her, smudging the drying ink on her parchment. Charts that she had spent two full hours doing late last night – two full hours that, had she known he was going to show up with a stick up his arse today and was going to make her redo, she could have spent in an attempt at sweet slumber, in complete denial of any association with the now-consistently cranky Head Boy.

She looked up, as calmly as she could possibly muster. She was glad she'd sat in one of the more private corners of the library today, otherwise she was sure they would have had an audience. And Malfoy was bad enough without an audience.

"What's wrong with them?"

"They look like the handiwork of a First Year. You've forgotten all about the pairs that aren't allowed to patrol together, not to mention you've left out about, oh, let's see, a fourth of the prefects assigned for patrol."

"It's exams, Malfoy," she said tiredly. "They asked not to patrol this week."

"I'm sorry, so we're wish-granters now, are we?" he snapped. "Well, I wish you'd told me, Granger, so that I could have wished for a Head Girl that wasn't so incompetent." He glared at her. "Redo these charts. Everybody goes on patrol."

Hermione scowled at him. She was sure the entire library had heard them, and she could feel her face steaming with embarrassment. From a quick observation of Malfoy, she knew something was clearly off. He looked like he hadn't gotten any sleep in days, and had been progressively acting like it – if he wasn't brooding and completely oblivious to the world, he was snapping at her about being incompetent as a Head Girl, or he was on the brink of tearing her head off over something so trivial. Head Duties with him could now be accurately described as entering Dante's seventh level of hell.

Hermione tried not to sympathize with him. She hadn't been getting much sleep either, but that didn't excuse treating the rest of the world like shit. Deep down inside she found herself wondering about his mother, if she was the reason he was suddenly thoroughly foul. But she could never muster up the nerve to ask if she was still alive. She had to be. If she wasn't. . . well, she assumed Draco would have been long gone by now.

"I mean it, Granger," he said warningly, before he stalked out of the aisle.

She was only in her seat for a few more moments before she found herself stomping after him, walking along the seated throng of curious stares. "Get back to work, all of you," she said sternly, and they quickly ducked their heads back down, pretending to be engrossed in something other than the palpable hostility between their two Heads.

She caught up to Malfoy in the corridor. "Hey!"

He whirled around, annoyed. "What?"

She stopped in front of him. Beside her, she clenched and unclenched her hand, speaking in a hushed but forceful tone. "Don't you dare speak to me that way. Do you understand me, Malfoy? I know neither of us like it, but we're supposed to be a _team_. Contrary to your delusional beliefs, you are not my superior here. We are equals. So treat me with some respect."

Had she not been so full of fire she would have laughed at herself for saying these things to Malfoy. What would he care about respect? About equality? About teamwork? Even in Quidditch he played like a one-man team, obviously skeptical of anybody else's skill. She stood there, glaring at him, her posture as rigid as a straight line, and she braced herself for the likelihood that he might mock her. Or worse: laugh at her.

She didn't know what she'd do if he were to react that way. Hex him, or hit him, maybe. Add another tally to her "good change/bad change" chart McGonagall had brought up. Why cramp her progress if she was already on a roll?

Something in his dark gray eyes settled, flickering at her. He stepped forward, and she tried not to flinch, his blond head towering above her. For one pulsating second, she was scared of what he actually might do.

"Redo the charts, Granger," was all he said to her, sneering. And then he turned on his heel and walked away.

She let out a shuddering breath, moments after. She shook her head.

"Bastard," she muttered at his back, before turning around to head back to the library. As she was walking, she glimpsed someone leaning against one of the stone pillars. She slowed in her step, begrudgingly turning towards their uninvited guest.

"You really shouldn't have spats out in the public like that," Blaise said, his hands coolly shoved into his pockets, looking extremely self-satisfied (a Slytherin House trait, she was sure). "It's really bad for. . . what was it again? That sappy rubbish Dumbledore's always going on about? Oh, yeah. Inter-House unity."

"Bollocks you care about inter-House unity," she said to Blaise. "And besides – it's rude to eavesdrop."

"I'd hardly call it eavesdropping if you've been shouting at each other since the library. What was I supposed to do, plug my ears and hum to myself?"

She placed her hands on her hips, annoyed. As far as Slytherins went, Blaise Zabini did not offend her as much as his other Housemates. They'd been paired for assignments in the past and he'd been perfectly civil to her. A little condescending, true, but tolerable.

"Zabini, what do you want?" she said to him.

"What do _I_ want?" he echoed. "Where do I start?" He sobered a little when he saw the look on her face, getting up off the wall and cheekily stepping towards her. "Can't I just have a chat with my favorite Head Girl? That's what you're here for, aren't you? To facilitate a happy learning environment for your peers?"

"Don't take this personally, Blaise," she sighed, "but I'm not exactly ready to facilitate any kind of pleasing environment for your House at the moment. Or at any moment, really, for the last six and a half years."

She was already starting to feel a migraine coming on just at the mention of it.

"I've only come to ask for a small favor."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What kind of favor?"

He smiled, his eyes faintly twinkling. "One that requires your feminine expertise."

ooo

That weekend, Hermione Granger found herself standing in front of a jewelry shop in the more upscale area of Hogsmeade. She stared at the ostentatious window display and its gold lettering. It certainly looked like the kind of place she would never even dream of stepping into.

She was just about to turn and leave when she found Blaise, in a black, neatly tailored coat (not so unlike the coat Malfoy had been wearing that night he'd saved her in Hogsmeade), crossing the street.

"You came," he said. His half-smirk let her know he'd been counting on it. "Good."

He entered the shop with Hermione hesitantly trailing behind. The shop owner, an elderly man with a diamond earring, greeted Blaise and asked about his mother, and she took note of how impeccably clean all of the glass casings were, not to mention the gigantic jewels they displayed.

"I still don't know what I'm doing here," Hermione muttered. "I don't even know why you asked me, out of all people."

"Because you remind me of her. My sister," Blaise said, looking through all of the trinkets on display. Things that Hermione didn't dare touch, in case she accidentally broke them, in which case she would likely have to trade in her soul just to be able to pay for it.

"I never even knew you had a sister," she said.

"She's studying in France," he told her. "Was never really a fan of Hogwarts. I think it's because of that rabid troll, that one Halloween. I told her and she's never quite lived it down. She's deathly afraid of trolls."

"So I remind you of your little sister studying abroad in France," she remarked, highly unconvinced. "Right."

"Are you really this distrustful of everyone?" he asked her, his eyebrows raised.

For a second she thought of her dad, whom she would have trusted with her life. She thought about how absent he was now, at a time when she needed him the most.

And then she thought about Pansy, who had tied her up to a tree and tortured her late into the night.

"My trust's not exactly freely given these days," she told him.

He nodded, before turning back to the bracelets. "Well, just trust me. At least for an hour or two. And then you can go back to thinking the world is out to get you, I promise."

She looked around the store. A lone woman was hanging around the back, looking at crystal wind chimes. "Why not Pansy?"

"Her tastes differ greatly from my dear sister's," Blaise answered. "Pansy's a bit more ostentatious. My sister's more about understated elegance." At that, he turned his head slightly towards her and winked. Hermione took a subtle step back. Dear God, Blaise Zabini was flirting with her.

She rolled her eyes, but quickly turned to hide her reddening cheeks. "Your flattery won't work on me, Zabini," she said.

"Well, something did. Otherwise you wouldn't be here." Smirking, he raised a dainty gold chain between his fingers. "What do you think about this?"

Hermione leaned closer. It was a simple gold chain with a small emerald in the center.

"I think it's great. Simple," she said, but he had already set it back down and had begun looking around for something else. Hermione watched him study different necklaces, rings, and bracelets, announcing different facts about jewels and gems. In the back of her mind, she wondered what Ginny would say if she'd told her that Blaise Zabini had asked her to meet him in Madame Gwedolyn's Jewelry Shoppe to help him shop for his sister. There was zero chance she'd be as shocked as she herself was. Even more shocked, perhaps, that she'd even gone through with it. All she knew was: she had to get out of the castle.

"How do you know all of this?" she asked him, after he'd told her about all of the different cuts of jewels.

"My mother. She's very fond of jewelry," he said, inspecting a sapphire necklace. "And so were her ex-husbands in giving them to her." He motioned for her to come closer, telling her to take a look at it. Hermione did so, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the feeling of his gaze lingering on her.

She was never a materialistic kind of girl – not like Lavender and the other Gryffindor girls, who had shown a keenness for diamonds and jewelry. She didn't swoon at the sight of jewels or gold; she'd never really felt a connection to them the way other girls did. There was only one piece of jewelry she held close to her: the engagement ring her mum had left her when she died. It was a terribly modest thing, with the smallest of diamonds embedded in the center, but she found that she could stare at it for hours, trying to imagine the life it'd had.

But the necklace Blaise was showing her – she did approve. She looked at it, quite impressed. It was a perfect sapphire blue hanging off a thin, gold chain. He said he'd wanted understated elegance, and now he had it.

"Wow," was all she said.

"I take it that's a good thing," Blaise said, his voice rumbling in her ear.

Just then, the bells at the entrance rang, with the door swinging open. Hermione caught a glimpse of Blaise's smirking face before looking behind him to see exactly the last person she'd ever wanted to see on her weekend.

Her expression must have shown to reveal her dread because then Blaise turned around, chuckling.

"Well, look who it is. Our friendly neighborhood Head Boy."

Before Hermione could slip away – and hide, somewhere – he'd turned around and seen them. The way he looked at them – with surprise, and then barely hidden disdain and coldness, made something in her gut tighten. She also realized just how strange it must look, her and Blaise, being here, jewelry-shopping. For some reason, she felt the urge to explain, but quickly thought better of it. He was the last person in the world she owed any kind of explanation to.

"Malfoy," Blaise acknowledged. Hermione inwardly cringed. Did he have to sound so self-satisfied? "Fancy seeing you here."

"Zabini," he said, coolly. Then with perfect ice: "Granger."

"Malfoy," she muttered, keeping her gaze down.

"Picking something up for your mum?" Blaise asked.

Hermione's eyes jumped up. Malfoy looked away, obviously already bored with this conversation. "As a matter of fact, yes," he said, before turning back around. The jeweler had returned from the backroom with something wrapped in velvet. Draco paid before leaving without another word.

"That Malfoy," Blaise said. "Always such a joy to converse with."

"Yes, if I liked being lit on fire and fed raw to wild boars," she muttered. Blaise summoned the jeweler and they both headed towards the counter to pay. She tried not to take notice of exactly how much he paid, but did spot the bulging pouch of Galleons he gave to the jeweler.

She waited for Blaise outside of the shop, wondering if it would be okay to just leave. She'd excused herself while Blaise and the jeweler had a little chat. But it was only a few more moments before he joined her outside, a package in his hand.

"I think today was a success," he said to her. "I don't know what I would've done without you."

Hermione snorted. "I'm sure you would have done just fine. You know far more about jewelry than I will ever care to know."

He smiled at her. Or smirked. It was a sort of a half-smirk, half-smile hybrid that she was always mystified by. It took a very talented face to endeavor it.

They began to walk back towards the castle, and Hermione still could not shake the uneasy feeling of having spent some of her day with Blaise Zabini. Even more bizarre was how she couldn't stop thinking about that look Malfoy had given them in the jewelry store. There was a time she vaguely recalled that he and Blaise used to be. . . friends. But maybe "friends" wasn't the right word. She couldn't ever remember Malfoy having proper friends. Cronies – never friends.

"What was Malfoy doing in there?" she asked.

"Picking up something for his mum's birthday, I presume," he said. He looked at her, briefly. "I think it'd surprise you to know that you have more in common with him than you think."

"She's ill, not dying," Hermione found herself saying. "There's still hope."

She remembered when she used to say this to herself. To her father, not really, because she couldn't bring herself to – she was afraid he would see right through her, that he would know better. It was a hopeful statement ridden with tragic doubt. And then when her mum got well again, when she was in remission, it was like the whole world had taken a breath with her – before it was stolen again. This time, forever.

"He's told you." Something dawned on his face. What exactly, she didn't know, but she tried not to think much of his expression. Like it had meant something, that Malfoy had told her. It didn't. It was what people in crisis did – they deluged.

She shrugged, trying to feign nonchalance. "It came up. Briefly. Really briefly."

Blaise nodded, and Hermione couldn't shake the feeling like he knew something she didn't. Thankfully, he soon changed the subject, and thanked her when they got to the castle, promising to return the favor, before going their separate ways.

She came across Ron and Ginny in the corridor. Ron, looking highly confused – she noted that this wasn't an uncommon expression for him to wear – and Ginny looking quite impressed with her friend.

"Oy," he said to her, a half-eaten cookie in one hand and crumbs all over his chin. He was still looking behind her with a furrow in his brows. "Tell me I didn't just see you getting chummy with Blaise Zabini."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm not even going to dignify that question with an answer."

"Yeah, sod off, Ron," Ginny said. "What are you, her dad?"

Ron muttered something under his breath as he left towards the Pitch, disgruntled, and Ginny grabbed her arm as soon as her brother was out of earshot, smiling from ear to ear.

"First with babysitting Malfoy and now traipsing around with Blaise," she said, winking at her. "This is starting out to be your most interesting year yet, Hermione."

"I was not 'traipsing'!" she called after her friend.

"See you at supper!" Ginny singsonged.

ooo

Draco didn't know what it was – what could have possibly possessed him. Both Granger and Zabini were like little irritating rocks lodged in his shoes, poking him at every damn step, so why did a part of his insides freeze up, seeing them together in the jewelry store? He didn't know what made him angrier: the fact that Granger could be so stupid, or the fact that Zabini couldn't find a better candidate for his little games. Nothing could explain why he was here, now, hiding out in an alley with his mother's gift shoved in his coat pocket, waiting for the loathsome pair to come out of the jewelry store.

He couldn't understand why he cared. No, he didn't – he held no such capacity for someone like _Granger_. And that _if_ he did, it was only because he would be the first to be blamed if Granger were to somehow mysteriously disappear – or worse, turn up dead. Otherwise he would have simply said, Good riddance! A world without Granger. Something so fantastical it gave him shivers to think it could actually be true.

Finally, after a few minutes, he heard the brief jangle of the door opening and their faint voices. He hid behind the stone wall, catching a glimpse of both Zabini and Granger pass by. He stood there for a moment, denying anything he felt that might have clued in any sort of protective feeling he had towards her, before he pried himself off of the wall and began to head back towards the castle.

He still couldn't shake the feeling, though, of something big and terrible lurking ahead.

ooo

Draco checked the mirror as he waited for Blaise in the Slytherin common room. He only seemed to be seeing his bedridden mother with Klaus, their house elf. That had to mean that Granger had made it back safely. That, or she was beyond help – beyond needing him, that was, because she was dead.

He had just shoved the mirror back into his pocket when Blaise came striding in through the portrait hole. He didn't seem surprised to see him waiting there. Draco guessed this was because he wasn't.

"Ah, Malfoy. I didn't know you cared. Worried about my safety, were you?" Blaise said, snarkily. "You shouldn't have. I can take care of myself just fine." He tossed his coat onto one of the armchairs, taking a seat across from Draco. "Well. Aren't you going to ask me how my day went?" he smirked.

Draco stared at him, unamused. "What are you playing at, Zabini?"

He sucked in a breath through his teeth, as if hurt. "Straight to the point, look at you, Malfoy. This must annoy you more than I thought." He chuckled under his breath.

"If you're playing one of your little games, keep it to yourself," Draco snapped at him.

"Didn't your parents teach you the value of sharing? Oh, wait, your father was Lucius the court jester and your mother the ice queen. Forgive me." Blaise sobered. "With the Dark Lord quiet – for the time being, that is – I find that I've grown bored, Malfoy. Remember how we used to pass the time when we weren't following Death Eater business?"

Draco looked away. "There are better prospects, Blaise. You're underestimating her. She's trouble." He said this even though he knew that look on Blaise's face. He had made up his mind. She was his new target, and Draco. . . well, what about Draco? He wanted nothing to do with it.

So then why did his throat suddenly tighten and his mouth feel so dry? He reached over and poured himself a glass of scotch.

"I've thought about this, Malfoy. She's a tough one, that Granger, but it's the challenge that makes it sweeter. And with her so vulnerable after her mother's death. . ." he sniggered. "She'll be a fine addition to my collection, one of the better stories to tell."

Draco took one sip of his scotch before getting up to leave. His stomach felt unsettled, and his Housemate's unwavering, creepy stare was getting to be very annoying.

"Going so soon?" Blaise called after him.

"Head duties," he gruffly lied.

Blaise smirked, pleased with himself. "Say hello to Granger for me."

Draco stepped out of the portrait hole. Within the deep reaches of his mind, a voice called back: _Over my dead body_.

* * *

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